Letter: Mica's bill doesn't help state's waterways
Editor: Of all the preposterous claims made by U.S. Rep. John Mica in his guest column of Sept. 18, the most outrageous has to be that it is the EPA that is “gutting the Clean Water Act” by simply carrying out its statutory authority to protect the nation’s waterways. Now that the EPA, as required by the CWA, is setting standards that Mica and his friends at Koch Industries find objectionable, his response is to attempt to pass a law, HR 2018, that removes this fundamental authority.
Mica complains that Florida “is now required to implement these standards with little scientific basis …” Little scientific basis? The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has already determined that 1,918 miles of rivers, 376,000 acres of lakes, and 569 square miles of estuaries in the state are polluted. Obviously the current standards, which Mica wants to preserve, are not doing the job.
Mica has the audacity to claim that his legislation is an attempt to “maintain the federal/state partnership that has been the law for nearly 40 years.” The foundation of this partnership has always been the authority of the EPA to enforce the provisions of the CWA that Mica now seeks to remove. The CWA is not and never has been a voluntary system; it has been successful precisely because the states must comply with federally mandated standards.
It’s interesting that Mica’s talk about cooperation and maintaining a partnership is nowhere to be found in the text of his bill. Instead, you find in clear black and white terms that the administrator of EPA would be stripped of key authorities if the states “don’t agree” with his determinations. That is an odd way to nurture a partnership and clean up our state’s waterways.
Robin E. Nadeau
St. Augustine
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