A Sneaky Attack on Clean Water Rules (NYT editorial)

Editorial
A Sneaky Attack on Clean Water Rules
Published: June 16, 2011

Congress often kills or delays federal regulations it doesn’t like by simply denying agencies the money they need to carry them out. This spares Congress from actually debating the regulation on its merits.

House Republicans are adept at this, especially on environmental rules. Their latest intended victim is a worthy initiative aimed at protecting streams and wetlands from development and pollution.

In April, the Obama administration issued new guidelines to federal agencies charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, chiefly the Army Corps of Engineers. The guidelines, which the administration hopes to codify in a federal regulation later this year, are badly needed. Two muddled Supreme Court decisions, and earlier guidance from the George H. W. Bush administration, had effectively limited protections to navigable waterways. The new guidelines provide much-needed protections to thousands of miles of small streams and millions of acres of wetlands that are no less crucial to the health of the nation’s drinking water and its aquatic ecosystems.

The guidelines simply reaffirmed the original intent of the 1972 Clean Water Act, which was to protect “all the waters of the United States.” But this was far too radical for home builders, farmers, oil companies — anyone with an interest in filling in streams and wetlands. On Wednesday, their friends on the House Appropriations Committee added a provision to the Army Corps of Engineers spending bill prohibiting the corps from spending any money to “develop, adopt, implement, administer or enforce” the new guidelines. This effectively kills them ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17fri3.html?_r=1

And since they aren't allowed to spend money to develop them, they're dead in the water until Congress fixes the law.