[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 5881 Introduced in House (IH)]







110th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 5881

To direct the President to enter into an arrangement with the National 
 Academy of Sciences to evaluate certain Federal rules and regulations 
 for potentially harmful impacts on public health, air quality, water 
quality, plant and animal wildlife, global climate, or the environment; 
   and to direct Federal departments and agencies to create plans to 
reverse those impacts that are determined to be harmful by the National 
                          Academy of Sciences.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             April 23, 2008

   Ms. Lee (for herself, Mr. Grijalva, and Mr. Honda) introduced the 
  following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Science and 
  Technology, and in addition to the Committees on Transportation and 
    Infrastructure, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Energy and 
Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in 
   each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the 
                jurisdiction of the committee concerned

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To direct the President to enter into an arrangement with the National 
 Academy of Sciences to evaluate certain Federal rules and regulations 
 for potentially harmful impacts on public health, air quality, water 
quality, plant and animal wildlife, global climate, or the environment; 
   and to direct Federal departments and agencies to create plans to 
reverse those impacts that are determined to be harmful by the National 
                          Academy of Sciences.

    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 ``Environment and Public Health 
Restoration Act of 2008''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    (a) General Findings.--The Congress finds as follows:
            (1) As human beings, we share our environment with a wide 
        variety of habitats and ecosystems that nurture and sustain a 
        diversity of species.
            (2) The abundance of natural resources in our environment 
        forms the basis for our economy and has greatly contributed to 
        human development throughout history.
            (3) The accelerated pace of human development over the last 
        several hundred years has significantly impacted our natural 
        environment and its resources, the health and diversity of 
        plant and animal wildlife, the availability of critical 
        habitats, the quality of our air and our water, and our global 
        climate.
            (4) The intervention of the Federal Government is necessary 
        to minimize and mitigate human impact on the environment for 
        the benefit of public health, maintain air quality and water 
        quality, sustain the diversity of plants and animals, combat 
        global climate change, and protect the environment.
            (5) Laws and regulations in the United States have been 
        created and promulgated to minimize and mitigate human impact 
        on the environment for the benefit of public health, maintain 
        air quality and water quality, sustain wildlife, and protect 
        the environment.
            (6) Such laws include the Antiquities Act of 1906 (16 
        U.S.C. 431 et seq.) initiated by President Theodore Roosevelt 
        to create the national park system, the National Environmental 
        Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), the Clean Air Act 
        (42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq.), the Federal Water Pollution Control 
        Act Amendments of 1972 (Public Law 92- 500), the Clean Water 
        Act of 1977 (Public Law 95-217), the Comprehensive 
        Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 
        (Public Law 96-510), the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Public 
        Law 93-205), and the National Forest Management Act of 1976 
        (Public Law 94-588).
            (7) Attempts to repeal or weaken key environmental 
        safeguards pose dangers to the public health, air quality, 
        water quality, wildlife, and the environment.
    (b) Findings on Changes and Proposed Changes in Law.--The Congress 
finds that, since 2001, the following changes and proposed changes to 
existing law or regulations have negatively impacted or will negatively 
impact the environment and public health:
            (1) Clean water.--
                    (A) On May 9, 2002, the Environmental Protection 
                Agency (EPA) and the United States Army Corps of 
                Engineers put forth a final rule that reconciled 
                section 404 regulations of the Clean Water Act by 
                redefining the term ``fill material'' and amending the 
                definition of the term ``discharge of fill material'', 
                reversing a 25-year-old Clean Water Act regulation. The 
                new rule fails to restrict the dumping of hardrock 
                mining waste, construction debris, and other industrial 
                wastes into rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands. The 
                rule further allows destructive mountaintop removal 
                coal mining companies to dump waste into streams and 
                lakes, polluting the surrounding natural habitat and 
                poisoning plants and animals that depend on those water 
                sources.
                    (B) On February 12, 2003, the Environmental 
                Protection Agency published the rule ``National 
                Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit 
                Regulation and Effluent Limitation Guidelines and 
                Standards for Concentrated Animal Feeding 
                Operations''--new livestock waste regulations that 
                aimed to control factory farm pollution but which would 
                severely undermine existing Clean Water Act 
                protections. This regulation allows large-scale animal 
                factories to foul the Nation's waters with animal 
                waste, allows livestock owners to draft their own 
                pollution-management plans and avoid groundwater 
                monitoring, legalizes the discharge of contaminated 
                runoff water rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, bacteria, 
                and metals, and ensures that large factory farms are 
                not held liable for the environmental damage they 
                cause. In a 2005 Federal Court Decision (Waterkeeper 
                Alliance et al. v. EPA, 399 F.3d 486 (2nd Cir. 2005)), 
                major parts of the rule were upheld, others vacated, 
                and still others remanded back to the EPA. The EPA 
                proposed rule revisions in June 2006, along with 
                supplementary revisions in March 2008, which are still 
                pending final promulgation.
                    (C) On March 19, 2003, the Environmental Protection 
                Agency published a new rule regarding the Total Maximum 
                Daily Load program of the Clean Water Act, which 
                regulates the maximum amount of a particular pollutant 
                that can be present in a body of water and still meet 
                water quality standards. The new rule withdrew the 
                existing regulation put forth on July 13, 2000, and 
                halted momentum in cleaning up polluted waterways 
                throughout the country. By abandoning the existing 
                rule, the Environmental Protection Agency is 
                undermining the effectiveness of clean-up plans and is 
                allowing States to avoid cleaning polluted waters 
                entirely by dropping them from their clean-up lists. 
                Waterways play a crucial role in the lives of Americans 
                and are critical to the livelihood of fish and 
                wildlife. By dropping the July 2000 rule, cleanup of 
                existing polluted rivers, shorelines, and lakes will be 
                delayed, harming more fish and wildlife and worsening 
                the quality of drinking water.
                    (D) On June 5, 2007, the Environmental Protection 
                Agency and Army Corps of Engineers jointly issued a 
                Guidance Document in the form of a Legal Memorandum, 
                titled ``Clean Water Act Jurisdiction Following the 
                U.S. Supreme Court's Decision in Rapanos v. United 
                States & Carabell v. United States''. This new guidance 
                dictates enforcement actions under the Clean Water Act, 
                and calls for a complicated ``case-by-case'' analysis 
                to determine Clean Water Act jurisdiction for waterways 
                that do not flow all year long. Such actions endanger 
                small streams and wetlands that serve as important 
                habitats for aquatic life, which play a fundamental 
                role in safeguarding sources of clean drinking water 
                and mitigate the risks and effects of floods and 
                droughts. Further, the definition provided therein for 
                ``waters of the United States'' is applicable to the 
                Clean Water Act as a whole, potentially affecting 
                programs that control industrial pollution and sewage 
                levels, prevent oil spills, and set water quality 
                standards for all waters in the United States protected 
                under the Clean Water Act.
            (2) Forests and land management.--
                    (A) On December 3, 2003, the President signed into 
                law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (Public 
                Law 108-148). Although the law attempts to reduce the 
                risk of catastrophic forest fires, it provides a boon 
                to timber companies by accelerating the aggressive 
                thinning of backcountry forests that are far from at-
                risk communities. The law allows for increased logging 
                of large, fire-resistant trees that are not in close 
                proximity of homes and communities; it undermines 
                critical protections for endangered species by 
                exempting Federal land management agencies from 
                consulting with the United States Fish and Wildlife 
                Service before approving any action that could harm 
                endangered plants or wildlife; and it limits public 
                participation by reducing the number of environmental 
                project reviews.
                    (B) On April 21, 2008, the Department of 
                Agriculture issued a Final Planning Rule and Record of 
                Decision for National Forest System Land Management 
                Planning. Similar to rules enacted by the 
                Administration on January 5, 2005, later remanded back 
                to the agency in Federal district court for violating 
                the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the 
                Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the Administrative 
                Procedure Act (Citizens for Better Forestry v. U.S. 
                Dept. of Agriculture, 481 F. Supp. 2d 1059 (N.D. Cal. 
                2007)), this revised rule eliminates strict forest 
                planning standards established in 1982, and opens 
                millions of acres of public lands to damaging and 
                invasive logging, mining, and drilling operations. 
                These regulations would reverse more than 20 years of 
                protection for wildlife and national forests by 
                removing the overall goal of ensuring ecological 
                sustainability in managing the national forest system, 
                weakening the National Forest Management Act of 1976, 
                and effectively ending the review of forest management 
                plans under the National Environmental Policy Act of 
                1969.
                    (C) On September 20, 2006, the District Court for 
                the Northern District of California, vacated the 
                Protection of Inventoried Roadless Areas rule, enacted 
                on May 13, 2005, which gave State Governors 18 months 
                to petition the Federal Government to either restore 
                the previous rule for their States, or submit a new 
                management and development plan for national forest 
                areas inventoried under the rule. Despite the 
                enjoinment of the Administration's 2005 rule, and the 
                subsequent restoration of the original Roadless Area 
                Conservation Rule, the Department of Agriculture has 
                stated that States can still petition for a special 
                rule under the authority of the Administrative 
                Procedure Act. As a result, 58.5 million acres of wild 
                national forests are still vulnerable to logging, road 
                building, and other developments that may fragment 
                natural habitats and negatively impact fish and 
                wildlife.
            (3) Clean air.--
                    (A) On October 20, 2005, the Environmental 
                Protection Agency proposed the rule ``Prevention of 
                Significant Deterioration, Nonattainment New Source 
                Review, and New Source Performance Standards: Emissions 
                Test for Electric Generating Units'', along with a 
                supplemental proposal on April 25, 2007. This new rule 
                would significantly undermine the New Source Review 
                Permitting Program, a key tool of the Clean Air Act 
                which requires owners of industrial facilities to 
                install modern pollution control mechanisms whenever 
                existing equipment is expanded, improved, replaced, or 
                significantly repaired. Under the rulemaking proposal, 
                power plants could make modifications without 
                installing controls as long as such changes do not 
                increase ``maximum hourly emissions achievable'', 
                effectively allowing plants to increase annual 
                emissions of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide by more 
                than 10,000 tons per year, any time modifications 
                increase the hourly operations of the facility. 
                Described as ``effectively unenforceable'' by the 
                Director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Air 
                Enforcement Division, the proposed rule weakens the 
                effectiveness of the Clean Air Act and fails to hold 
                the oldest and dirtiest industrial facilities 
                accountable for reducing the amount of pollution they 
                produce, allowing them to continue to emit harmful 
                toxic pollutants that will have a detrimental impact on 
                public health and the environment.
                    (B) On March 27, 2008, the Environmental Protection 
                Agency issued a new rule revising National Ambient Air 
                Quality Standards for Ozone (NAAQS), which sets new EPA 
                air pollution limits for ground level ozone, or smog, 
                allowed in the air. Despite a requirement that directs 
                the EPA to set air pollution limits low enough, and 
                with a ``margin of safety'' sufficient to protect even 
                the most sensitive groups, this new rule sets primary 
                and secondary standards at .075 parts per million, well 
                above the lower level of .060 found to affect some 
                healthy individuals. The Clean Air Scientific Advisory 
                Committee unanimously recommended a range of .060 to 
                .070 for the primary ozone NAAQS. Because existing law 
                allows nonattainment areas up to twenty years to meet 
                air quality standards, the long-term implications of 
                this new standard and its extensive impact on public 
                health across the country necessitate standards 
                supported by available scientific data in order to 
                ensure adequate public protection from serious diseases 
                linked to ozone pollution including asthma, emphysema, 
                and bronchitis.
                    (C) On January 3, 2007, the Environmental 
                Protection Agency published a proposed rule to amend 
                the General Provisions of the National Emission 
                Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP). This 
                rule would eliminate the decade-old ``once-in-always-
                in'' policy which requires major source compliance with 
                maximum achievable control technology standards (MACT), 
                subverting the intent of the Clean Air Act for major 
                sources of hazardous air pollutants to achieve maximum 
                emissions reductions. By allowing a major source to 
                acquire ``area source'' status by obtaining potential-
                to-emit permits, and thereby avoid compliance with MACT 
                standards, the proposed rule would allow for 
                significantly higher emission levels of toxic air 
                pollutants from existing plants across the country. 
                Such a provision significantly degrades toxic air 
                pollution standards, and increases health risks for 
                millions of people exposed to higher levels of air 
                toxicity.

SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF POLICY.

    It is the policy of the United States Government to work in 
conjunction with States, territories, tribal governments, international 
organizations, and foreign governments in order to act as a steward of 
the environment for the benefit of public health, maintain air quality 
and water quality, sustain the diversity of plant and animal species, 
combat global climate change, and protect the environment for future 
generations to enjoy.

SEC. 4. STUDY AND REPORT ON PUBLIC HEALTH OR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF 
              REVISED RULES, REGULATIONS, LAWS, OR PROPOSED LAWS.

    (a) Study.--Not later than 30 days after the date of enactment of 
this Act, the President shall enter into an arrangement under which the 
National Academy of Sciences will conduct a study to determine the 
impact on public health, air quality, water quality, wildlife, and the 
environment of the following regulations, laws, and proposed laws:
            (1) Clean water.--
                    (A) Final Revisions to the Clean Water Act 
                Regulatory Definitions of ``Fill Material'' and 
                ``Discharge of Fill Material'', finalized and published 
                in the Federal Register on May 9, 2002 (67 FR 31129), 
                amending title 40, Code of Federal Regulations, part 
                232.
                    (B) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System 
                Permit Regulation and Effluent Limitation Guidelines 
                and Standards for Concentrated Animal Feeding 
                Operations, finalized and published in the Federal 
                Register on February 12, 2003 (68 FR 7176), amending 
                title 40, Code of Federal Regulations, parts 9, 122, 
                123, and 412.
                    (C) A March 19, 2003, rule published in the Federal 
                Register (68 FR 13608) withdrawing a July 13, 2000, 
                rule revising the Total Maximum Daily Load program of 
                the Clean Water Act (65 FR 43586), amending title 40, 
                Code of Federal Regulations, parts 9, 122, 123, 124, 
                and 130.
            (2) Forests and land management.--
                    (A) Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, signed 
                into law on December 3, 2003 (Public Law 108-148).
                    (B) National Forest System Land Management Planning 
                Rule, finalized and published in the Federal Register 
                on April 21, 2008 (73 FR 21468), replacing the 2005 
                final rule (70 FR 1022, Jan. 5, 2005), as amended March 
                3, 2006 (71 FR 10837) and the 2000 final rule adopted 
                on November 9, 2000 (65 FR 67514) as amended on 
                September 29, 2004 (69 FR 58055), amending title 36, 
                Code of Federal Regulations, part 219.
                    (C) The application of the Administrative Procedure 
                Act (5 U.S.C. 551 to 559, 701 to 706, et seq.), such 
                that States may petition for a special rule for the 
                roadless areas in all or part of said State.
                    (D) Official Guidance Document, ``Clean Water Act 
                Jurisdiction Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 
                Decision in Rapanos v. United States & Carabell v. 
                United States'', issued as a Legal Memorandum on June 
                5, 2007, and announced in the Federal Register on June 
                8, 2007 (72 FR 31824), relating to jurisdiction under 
                the Clean Water Act, section 404.
            (3) Clean air.--
                    (A) Proposed Rule, Prevention of Significant 
                Deterioration, Nonattainment New Source Review, and New 
                Source Performance Standards: Emissions Test for 
                Electric Generating Units, published in the Federal 
                Register on October 20, 2005 (70 FR 61081), including a 
                supplemental proposal on April 25, 2007 (72 FR 26202), 
                amending title 40, Code of Federal Regulations, parts 
                51 and 52.
                    (B) Final Rule, National Ambient Air Quality 
                Standards for Ozone, published in the Federal Register 
                on March 27, 2008 (73 FR 16436), amending title 40, 
                Code of Federal Regulations, parts 50 and 58.
                    (C) Proposed Rule, National Emission Standards for 
                Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), published in the 
                Federal Register on January 3, 2007 (72 FR 69), 
                amending title 40, Code of Federal Regulations, part 
                63.
    (b) Method.--In conducting the study under subsection (a), the 
National Academy of Sciences may utilize and compare existing 
scientific studies regarding the regulations, laws, and proposed laws 
listed in subsection (a).
    (c) Report.--Under the arrangement entered into under subsection 
(a), not later than 270 days after the date on which such arrangement 
is entered into, the National Academy of Sciences shall make publicly 
available and shall submit to the Congress and to the head of each 
department and agency of the Federal Government that issued, 
implements, or would implement a regulation, law, or proposed law 
listed in subsection (a), a report containing--
            (1) a description of the impact of all such regulations, 
        laws, and proposed laws on public health, air quality, water 
        quality, wildlife, and the environment, compared to the impact 
        of preexisting regulations, or laws in effect, including--
                    (A) any negative impacts to air quality or water 
                quality;
                    (B) any negative impacts to wildlife;
                    (C) any delays in hazardous waste cleanup that are 
                projected to be hazardous to public health; and
                    (D) any other negative impact on public health or 
                the environment; and
            (2) any recommendations that the National Academy of 
        Sciences considers appropriate to maintain, restore, or improve 
        in whole or in part protections for public health, air quality, 
        water quality, wildlife, and the environment for each of the 
        regulations, laws, and proposed laws listed in subsection (a), 
        which may include recommendations for the adoption of any 
        regulation or law in place or proposed prior to January 1, 
        2001.

SEC. 5. DEPARTMENT AND AGENCY REVISION OF EXISTING RULES, REGULATIONS, 
              OR LAWS.

    Not later than 180 days after the date on which the report is 
submitted pursuant to section 4(c), the head of each department and 
agency that has issued or implemented a regulation or law listed in 
section 4(a) shall submit to the Congress a plan describing the steps 
such department or such agency will take, or has taken, to restore or 
improve protections for public health and the environment in whole or 
in part that were in existence prior to the issuance of such regulation 
or law.
                                 <all>