Lummis votes against EPA

Written on September 12, 2011 by Cassie-Ellwood in National

LummisRep. Cynthia Lummis applauded President Obama last week for withdrawing the EPA’s proposed changes to ozone regulations that would have created new national air quality standards.

Lummis said the proposal, “prevented the loss of millions of American jobs,” according to a press release from her office.

This resistance to increased EPA authority comes just two months after Lummis co-sponsored a bill that would reallocate the authority to enforce the provisions of the Clean Water Act from the United States Environmental Protection Agency to individual states, which would be responsible for the implementation of cleanup plans for waterways within state borders.

The CWA, enacted in 1972, created guidelines for the acceptable levels of certain pollutants in navigable waterways, including streams, rivers, lakes, oceans, sloughs and wetlands. The EPA is responsible for ensuring that states keep toxins in waterways at acceptable levels in compliance with the CWA. Waterways not yet meeting that standard are classified as, “impaired.”

For Wyoming, this includes 1300 miles of rivers and streams, spread over 111 individual bodies of water that require cleaning, according to EPA classification. This legislation would curtail the ability of the EPA to enforce cleanup plans and to levy fines on individual and corporate violators of the CWA.

Lummis agreed with Rep. Nick Rahall , a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011 (H.R. 2018), who says the EPA is, “overreaching” when making states comply with clean water quality standards. He contended states are better prepared to initiate and oversee cleanup of waterways than the EPA is.

The bill reflects this, giving states the final say over new cleanup plans.

Lummis, who sits on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Appropriations committee, has a history of voting against EPA-related measures. She signed on as one of the bill’s 39 co-sponsors shortly before its passage in early July.

The bill, which passed the House with 223 Republicans and 16 Democrats in favor, now heads to the Senate where leaders do not plan to bring the bill before the floor, according to a report from National Public Radio. The White House said even if the bill were to pass Congress, the president would be likely to veto it.