House Members Seek to Mitigate EPA Influence

May 24, 2000

A bill has been introduced in the House designed to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency form overriding congressional intent by imposing new rules regulating total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) from non-point pollution sources such as agriculture. Bill authors maintain EPA is superceding congressional intent to let the states take the lead in regulating non-point source pollution.

"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," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX). "Its disregard for congressional intent has the potential to cost farmers, ranchers and timber workers millions of dollars without actually helping the environment."

The bill would require the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on the scientific bases of the development and implementation of TMDLs and the availability of alternative programs to address point and non-point source pollution control. The study then would be peer reviewed by appropriate federal, state and private sector interests.

Also, the bill requires that the EPA administrator consider the findings of the NAS before making a final decision on the agency’s proposed TMDL rules. The legislature 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.

In 1987, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to establish a framework within which states could exercise their authority to manage non-point sources of pollution. Combest says Congress never has granted the federal government an affirmative regulatory role in the management of non-point pollution sources nor has it granted EPA the authority to unilaterally change the distinctions between point and non-point sources of pollution as written in the law.

The House Agriculture Subcommittee on Department Operations held a field hearing in Wingate, NC, Monday to review the impact of EPA’s proposal to impose TMDLs for non-point source pollution control.

Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said it appears USDA and EPA "seem now to be in lockstep on the content of these proposed rules," which EPA plans to finalize by June 30. "Initially, USDA sent a letter to EPA expressing serious concerns that EPA was exceeding its authority, was thwarting 27 years of USDA cooperative work with states, local governments and landowners. Now, according to a joint statement issued May 1, USDA is EPA’s strongest ally," Goodlatte said.