The Biden administration's announced final rule about how U.S. waterways are defined and protected is the latest round of "regulatory overreach," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a statement.
The final rule was announced on New Year's Eve by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"The rule announced is the latest round of regulatory overreach regarding what waters are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act, and will unfairly burden America's farmers, ranchers, miners, infrastructure builders and landowners," Capito said in a statement issued by her office.
Capito, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who supported the bipartisan Water Resources Development Act of 2022 signed into law in December, said she is no stranger to environmental review.
"I've been a longtime leader in the fight to reform our nation's environmental review process," she said. "Reform is badly needed for infrastructure, transportation and energy projects of all kinds to move forward. Unfortunately this rule would move us backward by making more projects subject to federal permitting requirements and adding more bureaucratic red tape."
Capito's statement came the same day EPA announced that its final Navigable Waters Protection Rule had been reached by the agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The rule spells out how the nation's wetlands, small streams and other waterways will be protected from pollution.
The new finalized rule repealed a Trump-era version, largely by changing how "waters" is defined and in such "a way that will expand federal regulatory authority," Capito said in her statement.
The prior rule did a better job, and the new rule is "unnecessary," Capito said.
"The 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule appropriately implemented the Clean Water Act by protecting our nation's water and providing regulatory certainly," she added. "It's unnecessary to make this third major change to the definition of federal jurisdictional waters in less than eight years."
