MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange (R) announced Wednesday afternoon that the Yellowhammer State is joining with 10 other states to stand against the EPA’s scheduled expansion of the “Waters of the United States” rule.
The new rule seeks to extend the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers’ regulatory reach to an indefinite number of small bodies of water, including roadside ditches, temporary streams or “any waters located within the 100-year floodplain of a traditional navigable water.”
“With only a month before the EPA is to begin enforcing its unprecedented regulatory power grab, Alabama has once again teamed up with other concerned states to block the implementation of the Waters of the U.S. rule,” said AG Strange in a press release Wednesday.
Alabama joins Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin in filing the motion for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the expanded rule, which is set to go into effect August 28th.
Opponents of the rule say it is a drastic overreach of the EPA’s authority and could even cause Alabama farmers to stop working their land for fear of backlash from the agency.
“Unquestionably, the rule expands EPA’s authority far beyond what was intended by the Clean Water Act – protecting America’s lakes and rivers from pollution – to every stream, ditch, and pond within our state, even those that only occasionally hold water,” said Strange. “The EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule, which is perhaps its most extreme to date, is undertaken with one goal in mind – to vastly expand its control over private property and in open defiance of legal rights of states to regulate their own local waterways.”
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
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