President's veto gives Clean Water Rule a shot in the courts

The Clean Water Rule, when fully implemented, will protect small headwater streams like this one in southwest Montana from unpermitted development. 

By Steve Moyer

Yesterday, President Obama vetoed Senate Joint Resolution 22, a measure that would have derailed the Clean Water Rule and denied Americans the chance to make our water cleaner and our watersheds healthier. Trout Unlimited, and American sportsmen and women, applaud this action and call on Congress to drop further efforts to scuttle the Clean Water Rule.

The purpose of the Clean Water Rule, a measure requested by Chief Justice Roberts and stakeholders of all persuasions in years past, is to help the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency do a better job with the foremost of the fundamentals – deciding what is, and what is not, a waterway afforded protection by America’s favorite natural resource law, the Clean Water Act.  

SJR 22, approved by the Senate in November and the House in December, was an extraordinary and radical action to overturn the rule. By invoking the Congressional Review Act, this joint resolution would not only wipe out the final Clean Water Rule, but would also prohibit any substantially similar rule in the future. It would lock in the current state of jurisdictional confusion and offered no constructive path forward for regulatory clarity or for ensuring protections for our nation’s waters. America’s hunters and anglers cannot afford to have Congress undermine effective Clean Water Act safeguards, leaving communities and valuable headwater streams and wetlands at risk indefinitely. 

American sportsmen and women support the Clean Water Rule. We understand the importance of the Rule when it comes to protecting headwater streams and valuable wetlands, which provide essential benefits for drinking water, flood control, nutrient filtration and not the least of which, for the trout, ducks and other wildlife so valued by sportsmen and women. Our waterways support a robust outdoor recreation economy. The sport fishing industry alone accounts for 828,000 jobs, nearly $50 billion annually in retail sales, and an economic impact of about $115 billion every year. 

A recent National Wildlife Federation poll of sportsmen and women found that more than 80 percent of respondents favored the Clean Water Rule. More than 800,000 Americans supported the rule during the public comment period. Sportsmen and women of all types, from all states supported the rule.

The President’s veto should allow the rule to get its full day in court. When the procedural steps are complete and the merits are addressed, we believe the rule will prevail. As its critics can attest, it is not perfect. But it is legally and scientifically sound, and it is good for clean water in America. 

Steve Moyer is the vice president for government affairs at Trout Unlimited.