[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 962 Introduced in House (IH)]
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 962
To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the
jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 27, 2003
Mr. Oberstar (for himself, Mr. Dingell, Mr. DeFazio, Mr. Leach, Mr.
Hoeffel, Mr. Kucinich, Mr. Kildee, Mr. Brown of Ohio, Ms. Baldwin, Ms.
Norton, Ms. McCollum, Mr. Pascrell, Mr. Boehlert, Mr. Blumenauer, Ms.
Schakowsky, Mr. Markey, Mr. George Miller of California, Mr. Visclosky,
Mr. Inslee, Mr. Nadler, Mrs. Napolitano, and Mrs. Tauscher) introduced
the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the
jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Clean Water Authority Restoration
Act of 2003''.
SEC. 2. PURPOSES.
The purposes of this Act are as follows:
(1) To reaffirm the original intent of Congress in enacting
the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (86
Stat. 816) to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and
biological integrity of the waters of the United States.
(2) To clearly define the waters of the United States that
are subject to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
(3) To provide protection to the waters of the United
States to the fullest extent of the legislative authority of
Congress under the Constitution.
SEC. 3. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Water is a unique and precious resource that is
necessary to sustain human life and the life of animals and
plants.
(2) Water is used not only for human, animal, and plant
consumption, but is also important for agriculture,
transportation, flood control, energy production, recreation,
fishing and shellfishing, and municipal and commercial uses.
(3) In enacting amendments to the Federal Water Pollution
Control Act in 1972 and through subsequent amendment, including
the Clean Water Act of 1977 (91 Stat. 1566) and the Water
Quality Act of 1987 (101 Stat. 7), Congress established the
national objective of restoring and maintaining the chemical,
physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the United
States and recognized that achieving this objective requires
uniform, minimum national water quality and aquatic ecosystem
protection standards to restore and maintain the natural
structures and functions of the aquatic ecosystems of the
United States.
(4) Water is transported through interconnected hydrologic
cycles, and the pollution, impairment, or destruction of any
part of an aquatic system may affect the chemical, physical,
and biological integrity of other parts of the aquatic system.
(5) Protection of intrastate waters, along with other
waters of the United States, is necessary to restore and
maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of
all waters in the United States.
(6) The regulation of discharges of pollutants into
interstate and intrastate waters is an integral part of the
comprehensive clean water regulatory program of the United
States.
(7) Small and periodically-flowing streams comprise the
majority of all stream channels in the United States and serve
critical biological and hydrological functions that affect
entire watersheds, including reducing the introduction of
pollutants to large streams and rivers, and especially
affecting the life cycles of aquatic organisms and the flow of
higher order streams during floods.
(8) The pollution or other degradation of waters of the
United States, individually and in the aggregate, has a
substantial relation to and effect on interstate commerce.
(9) Protection of the waters of the United States,
including intrastate waters, is necessary to prevent
significant harm to interstate commerce and sustain a robust
system of interstate commerce in the future.
(10) Waters, including wetlands, provide protection from
flooding, and draining or filling wetlands and channelizing or
filling streams, including intrastate wetlands and streams, can
cause or exacerbate flooding, placing a significant burden on
interstate commerce.
(11) Millions of people in the United States depend on
wetlands and other waters of the United States to filter water
and recharge surface and subsurface drinking water supplies,
protect human health, and create economic opportunity.
(12) Millions of people in the United States enjoy
recreational activities that depend on intrastate waters, such
as waterfowl hunting, bird watching, fishing, and photography
and other graphic arts, and those activities and associated
travel generate billions of dollars of income each year for the
travel, tourism, recreation, and sporting sectors of the
economy of the United States.
(13) Activities that result in the discharge of pollutants
into waters of the United States are commercial or economic in
nature.
(14) States have the responsibility and right to prevent,
reduce, and eliminate pollution of waters, and the Federal
Water Pollution Control Act respects the rights and
responsibilities of States by preserving for States the ability
to manage permitting, grant, and research programs to prevent,
reduce, and eliminate pollution, and to establish standards and
programs more protective of a State's waters than is provided
under Federal standards and programs.
(15) Protecting the quality of and regulating activities
affecting the waters of the United States is a necessary and
proper means of implementing treaties to which the United
States is a party, including treaties protecting species of
fish, birds, and wildlife.
(16) Protecting the quality of and regulating activities
affecting the waters of the United States is a necessary and
proper means of protecting Federal land, including hundreds of
millions of acres of parkland, refuge land, and other land
under Federal ownership and the wide array of waters
encompassed by that land.
(17) Protecting the quality of and regulating activities
affecting the waters of the United States is necessary to
protect Federal land and waters from discharges of pollutants
and other forms of degradation.
SEC. 4. DEFINITION OF WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES.
Section 502 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C.
1362) is amended--
(1) by striking paragraph (7);
(2) by redesignating paragraphs (8) through (23) as
paragraphs (7) through (22), respectively; and
(3) by adding at the end the following:
``(23) Waters of the united states.--The term `waters of
the United States' means all waters subject to the ebb and flow
of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and
intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes,
rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats,
sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows,
playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the
foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or
activities affecting these waters, are subject to the
legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.''.
SEC. 5. CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.) is
amended--
(1) by striking ``navigable waters of the United States''
each place it appears and inserting ``waters of the United
States'';
(2) in section 304(l)(1) by striking ``navigable waters''
in the heading and inserting ``waters of the united states'';
and
(3) by striking ``navigable waters'' each place it appears
and inserting ``waters of the United States''.
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