Ag Policy Blog

Ahead of a scheduled joint hearing Wednesday of the Senate Environment and Public Works and House Transportation and Infrastructure committees on the waters of the U.S. rule to be finalized this spring, one congressman is pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fully respond to a request for information about the agency's efforts to map potential waters of the U.S. that could become jurisdictional with the new rule.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Tuesday, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said the agency still hasn't completely complied with a request by his committee for information about EPA mapping efforts. The agency took heat last year for previously not disclosing detailed maps of all 50 states showing waters that could potentially become jurisdictional, although members of Congress asked for the information.

A handful of agriculture interest groups released their own versions of those maps last year based on government-provided data. Those maps show what the industry says is startling images of web-like tributaries and streams covering virtually entire states -- images the groups' say show the potential reach of the EPA proposal.

EPA has said the maps were not created to make Clean Water Act determinations, which would require more extensive and detailed efforts on the ground.

Smith said in the letter EPA still has not provided all the information his committee requested back on Aug. 27, 2014. EPA reportedly hired a private contractor to create maps that he said "the agency hid from public view until they were discovered by my staff.

"More than four months later on Jan. 8, 2015, EPA responded to my request, providing documents and a staff briefing that, despite its extreme tardiness, I had hoped signaled a new effort by the agency to cooperate with the committee's requests," Smith said in the letter.

"Unfortunately, the response instead continues EPA's long pattern of obstruction of the committee's jurisdictional and constitutionally obligated oversight responsibilities. Rather than providing full transparency about the maps, the motivations behind their creation and the reason for them being kept from public view, the agency's response only raises additional questions at a time when the agency is attempting to re-write Clean Water Act jurisdiction."

Smith said an agency official told the committee the contractor was hired to create the maps "by junior staff without the knowledge of senior EPA Office of Water officials."

"Documents produced by EPA in response to my Aug. 27 request appear to tell a different story," Smith said. The committee received a copy of an email between an office of water employee and the contractor, where the employee indicated a senior staff member was "very eager to get results to the NPDES analysis...

"Again, contrary to EPA's assertions to the committee, senior EPA officials appear to have been actively engaged in the work between the office of water and the contractor engaged to produce the maps," Smith said in the letter. "Additional documents appear to provide further evidence that EPA created the maps to aid in its efforts to expand its regulatory reach over private property owners across the nation."

Smith again asks EPA for "all documents and communications referring or relating to the 'Vulnerable Waters' project;" "Full responses to the committee's official questions for the record from the July 9, 2014, full committee hearing entitled "Navigating the Clean Water Act; Is Water Wet?" Smith also asks for documents and communications between a number of EPA offices.

Read Smith's letter here, http://tinyurl.com/…

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