Small Business Cheers Agency Opposition to Clean Water Act Expansion

www.NFIB.com
For Immediate
Release
Contact:  Eric Reller 202-314-2073 or [email protected]

 

Small Business Cheers Agency Opposition to Clean Water
Act Expansion

 National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) glad to have an ally in EPA’s
massive power grab  

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 2, 2014)
— The National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) today
loudly applauded the Small Business Administration’s
Office of Advocacy for asking the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to
withdraw a controversial new rule treating almost any body of water, including
farmers’ ponds and seasonal streams, the way it currently treats rivers and
bays under the Clean Water Act.

“It’s inconceivable that Congress intended for every accumulation
of water, no matter how incidental, to be regulated by the EPA when it passed
the Clean Water Act,” said Dan Bosch, NFIB
Manger of Regulatory Policy.  “And
the Office of Advocacy is exactly correct in pointing out that the economic
impact on small business will be significant and direct.”

In a letter
sent yesterday to the EPA, the office’s Chief Counsel, Winslow Sargeant,
challenged the agency’s determination that the economic consequences for small
businesses would be indirect and therefore don’t require an economic impact
analysis.  He pointed out that federal
agencies have already estimated the new costs for permitting and mitigation in
the tens of millions of dollars.

“Small businesses like farmers and developers who own land on
which there is even occasional water could be subject to enormous new
compliance costs and an even bigger threat of litigation,” said Bosch.

NFIB strongly supports Advocacy’s call for the new rule to be
rescinded until a more thorough economic analysis can be completed.

“The EPA’s analysis is conspicuously limited and it certainly
doesn’t satisfy the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which Congress adopted
expressly for the purpose of stopping regulatory agencies from imposing costly
new rules without regard for the majority of employers and the larger economy,”
said Bosch. 

 

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