Today the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved H.R 2018 H.R. 2018, the “Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011,”
Here is the committee's description of the bill
The bill amends the Clean Water Act (CWA) to restore the long-standing balance between federal and state partners in regulating the nation’s waters, and to preserve the system of cooperative federalism established under the CWA in which the primary responsibilities for water pollution control are allocated to the states. The bill restricts EPA’s ability to second-guess or delay a state's permitting and water quality certification decisions under the CWA after the federal agency has already approved a state's program.
What this does is give states, not the federal government, the ultimate control over upholding the Clean Water Act on a number of permitting issues. In practice this would mean each individual state gets oversight over water policy, taking us back to the days of the Cuyahoga River fire and Love Canal, before Congress passed a federal law in 1972.
Mother Jones
The bill is bipartisan, sponsored by Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), and 32 others. Mica is hot and bothered about the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to address nutrient pollution in Florida's waterways. Rahall is mad that the EPA rejected an application to dump strip mining waste from a mountaintop removal site in West Virginia.
We are at war in trying to preserve what is left of our environment. We need to keep an eye on this bill and make sure it does not pass in the senate. They are trying every way to gut the EPA and our foundational environmental laws. I don't want Rick Scott deciding if Florida should have clean water