A coalition of Republican lawmakers used Election Day to join a 31-state lawsuit opposing the Obama administration’s far-reaching Waters of the U.S. rule in federal court.
“Through the WOTUS rule, the agencies seek to expand their authority … beyond the scope established by Congress,” the coalition, led by Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio, said in a friend of the court brief filed Tuesday in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court.
The group of 21 senators and nearly 70 House members are joining more than 30 states and several industry groups in opposing the rule, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers broad enforcement powers over waterways, including trenches and ditches on private lands. The states began suing the EPA over the rule last year and are briefing the court.
The rule has been a prime target by the GOP, which has tried a number of ways to reverse the regulation, including budgetary cuts and a number of other means that have been met by strong Democratic opposition.
“We have led congressional disapproval of the WOTUS rule, we have seen this lawsuit brought by 31 states, and WOTUS has been opposed by property rights advocates,” said Gibbs, who is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s water panel. “Despite all of this, the Obama administration continues to defend the flawed rule, even after the revelation that the EPA broke the law in promoting it.
“EPA’s WOTUS rule is an excessive expansion of federal authority with no return on water quality improvements,” Gibbs said. “It is time for the EPA to begin treating the states as partners rather than adversaries.”
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a 181-page report last month that concluded that the rule, also called the Clean Water Rule, was “scientifically deficient” and political in nature.
“WOTUS was a doomed rule out of the gate,” said Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “The Obama administration prioritized politics over policy by rushing through a legally and scientifically deficient rule. This report illustrates the many ways in which the White House and EPA abused their authority to advance one of their top regulatory priorities.”
