EPA RELEASES MAPS SHOWING U.S. STREAMS

Lindsay Mitchell

Aug 28, 2014  |  Today's News

The House Science Committee released Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maps today that could show the extent of their proposed Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) regulation. 

The Republican chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, says the maps reveal a plot to “control a huge amount of private property across the country.”

The EPA maintains that the maps were created years ago to show the potentially impacted areas of the 2001 Supreme Court case and pending litigation, and they have no bearing to the current WOTUS rulemaking.

Smith, who obtained the maps from the EPA, notes that they were created in 2013, shortly after the agency proposed its contentious Waters of the United States rule. Smith contends the maps, which show the locations of streams, marshes and reservoirs, along with larger rivers and lakes, signal the breadth of the agency’s plans to assert authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA). 

“These maps show the EPA’s plan: to control a huge amount of private property across the country,” he said in a statement. “While the Agency marches forward with a rule that could fundamentally re-define Americans’ private property rights, the EPA kept these maps hidden.”

According to the National Cattlemen’s Association, these maps show individual states facing upwards of 100,000 additional stream miles that could be regulated under the proposed regulation.

The maps are available on the House Committee website here