Love that dirty water.....

The NYT had a good editorial on the recent SCOTUS decision regarding the Clean Water Act. The decision was about as clear as mud. It appears the court rendered three different opinions that say three different things. Congressional intervention seems imminent and necessary.

There is a bill in Congress that would quickly resolve the issue. It is called the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act, and its purpose is to remove any ambiguities in the original law and to reassert, in clear terms, the act's intention to protect all the waters of the United States, large and small, permanent or seasonal, navigable or isolated.

This would also clarify things for the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers, the regulatory agencies charged with carrying out the law. With the law's scope in doubt, neither agency has known quite how to proceed — some developers received permits to dredge and fill wetlands and small streams, some did not. Congress can make sure that from now on the law is squarely on the side of clean water.

A lot of conservatives and large L Libertarians find the regulations unneccessary and cumbersome, grumbling about anti-business rules and charge that these sort of regs thwart reasonable development. I'm not big on government interference myself, but when it comes to our water, an absolute necessity for the continuation of life, it seems to me to be better to err on the side of caution. Once your aquifers are corrupted, they are not easily restored.