Senator
Mike Crapo, Chairman
Subcommittee
on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water
I am glad to welcome David Mabe from
Idaho. David is the Administrator of Water
Quality Programs for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. David and I
worked together on the issues we are discussing today when I served in the
Idaho Senate. At that time, Idaho was
wrestling with a poorly made 303(d) list and a short deadline for making it
defensible and taking action on the actual problems. In recalling those days I
notice that litigation still ties this issue in knots and we are still
struggling to solve many of the same problems.
Today we will discuss several
aspects of clean water. Although we all
understand the fundamental importance of water, we should not gloss over this
obvious importance. We should begin today’s discussion remembering that our
shared goal is to continue improving the cleanliness of water. We should do this by focusing on action and
results instead of endless arguments about the right level of precaution.
The Clean Water Act is one of the
statutes that allow a productive State-Federal relationship. It is important that we protect the basis
for that relationship in the law, and that we use that relationship fully. By working together, Federal and State governments
can accomplish more and can discover more and better ways of sharing
responsibility on all aspects of conservation.
To protect this State-Federal
partnership, we should attend especially to whether and how the Federal partner
should approve or disapprove of State decisions. In developing Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), for example, State
decisions should be respected on which water bodies should be listed and in
what order the list should be acted upon.
On this and other specific issues,
the Federal program should accept responsibility for showing that an inadequacy
exists instead of fixating on levels of effort. By confusing effort with results, we can waste valuable resources
and gravely delay progress.
Total Maximum Daily Loads: Idaho started early to tackle this enormous
undertaking, and we continue to struggle with a task that seemingly will absorb
any amount of money.
Pollution trading: . . . is another area in which our state has
been a pioneer. We hope to use this and
other market-type rules to focus resources to their most effective uses.
Stormwater management: . . . is a tale of many cities. Today we will hear the widely divergent
experiences of two American cities. The
difficulty of anticipating the specific needs of many communities within a national
rule will be displayed obviously today.
Spill containment: like stormwater, a problem of national
rulemaking?
Negligence standards: finally, we must be sure that policy creates
incentives to identify and fix problems.
Today we will consider whether current rules of negligence under the
Clean Water Act present deterrents.