House Panel Holds TMDL Hearing Wednesday

June 27, 2000

The House Agriculture Committee holds a hearing Wednesday on a bill designed to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from overriding congressional intent by imposing newrules regulating total maximum daily loads (TMDL) from non-point pollution sources. The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. in 1300 Longworth Building.

Last August EPA proposed two changes to the regulations governing the implementation of the Clean Water Act which, if finalized, would fundamentally alter the agency's role in the management of nonpoint sources of pollution. The EPA's proposal has met with widespread opposition to both the substance of these rules and the accelerated process employed by the EPA to bring them to finality.

"Instead of allowing states to develop programs specific to their local needs, the EPA is using faulty data and assumptions to override the authority Congress explicitly left to the states," House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX) said. "Its disregard for congressional intent has the potential to cost farmers, rancher, and timber workers millions of dollars without actually helping the environment."

The Water Pollution Program Improvement Act on which the committee will hear testimony Wednesday would require the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct a study on the scientific basis of the development and implementation of TMDLs and the availability of alternative programs to address point and non-point source pollution control. The studywould then be peer reviewed by appropriate federal, state and private sector interests.

In addition, the legislation requires that the EPA administrator consider the findings of the NAS prior to rendering a final decision on the EPA's proposed TMDL rules. H.R. 4502 further forbids the administrator from changing any definition of, or distinction between, point and non-point sources of pollution contained in current regulations, unless Congress passes a law doing so.

The Subcommittee on Department Operations, Nutrition and Forestry held a field hearing in Lonoke, AR, recently where both Republican and Democratic members of the House called for EPA to withdraw the proposed TMDL rules.