On May 23, the House Committee on Small Business sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy requesting the agencies withdraw the proposed rule to the Clean Water Act. If you missed the previous story, go here.
In the letter, the committee says the agencies “have not fulfilled their obligations under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) … to conduct outreach to and assess the impacts of the proposed rule …” The committee also writes that it’s “concerned the proposed rule could have a significant economic impact on small businesses, yet the agencies have not assessed those consequences as required by the RFA.
“We believe the agencies should withdraw the proposed rule and conduct the required small business outreach and analysis before proceeding with the rulemaking,” the letter reads.
As an alternative to pulling the proposal, the committee requests that the public comment period for the proposed rule be extended by an additional 90 days “to ensure small businesses have adequate time to review and provide input on this proposal.”
As of June 5, the comment period is still slated to end July 21, 2014. The EPA nor the Corps have responded to the committee's request.
View the proposal and comment instructions at https://federalregister.gov/a/2014-07142.
And on May 29, the committee conducted a hearing about how small businesses would be affected by the proposed rule.
“This EPA ‘Waters of the United States’ proposed rule is a classic example of regulatory overreach,” says Rep. Sam Graves, Small Business Committee chairman. “This rule will impose significant additional costs and burdens on small businesses to comply with Clean Water Act requirements for thousands of small streams, ditches, ponds, and other isolated waters, some of which may have little or no connection to traditionally navigable waters that the Act was designed to protect. This is a power grab that cannot be justified.
“It demonstrates the lengths to which the Obama Administration will bend its interpretation of the law and ignore the limits placed on it by Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution, to achieve its big government objectives.”
See more comments from the hearing here.
Watch our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates on this proposal.
Image courtesy of Forsyth Cooperative Extension Service.