[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1870 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







110th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1870

    To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the 
  jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 25, 2007

 Mr. Feingold (for himself, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Levin, Mr. Kerry, Mr. 
   Lieberman, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Menendez, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Cardin, Mr. 
Durbin, Mr. Reed, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Whitehouse, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. 
 Carper, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Schumer) introduced 
the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee 
                    on Environment and Public Works

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 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 Restoration Act of 
2007''.

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 
        (commonly known as the ``Clean Water 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) Through prior enactments, 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. Since the 1970s, the definitions of ``waters of 
        the United States'' in the U.S. Environmental Protection 
        Agency's and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' regulations have 
        properly established the scope of waters needed to be protected 
        by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et 
        seq.) in order to meet the national objective.
            (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 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 
        intrastate waters is an integral part of the comprehensive 
        clean water regulatory program of the United States.
            (7) Small and intermittent streams, including ephemeral and 
        seasonal streams, comprise the majority of all stream miles in 
        the United States and serve critical biological and 
        hydrological functions that affect entire watersheds. These 
        waters reduce the introduction of pollutants to large streams 
        and rivers, provide and purify drinking water supplies, and are 
        especially important to 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 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 streams and wetlands, provide 
        protection from flooding. Draining or filling intrastate 
        wetlands and channelizing or filling intrastate streams can 
        cause or exacerbate flooding that causes billions of dollars of 
        damages annually, placing a significant burden on interstate 
        commerce.
            (11) Millions of people in the United States depend on 
        streams, 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. Source water protection areas containing small or 
        intermittent streams provide water to public drinking water 
        supplies serving more than 110 million Americans.
            (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 those activities and associated travel generate hundreds of 
        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. More than 14,000 facilities with individual permits 
        issued in accordance with the Federal Water Pollution Control 
        Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.), including industrial plants and 
        municipal sewage treatment systems, discharge into small or 
        intermittent streams.
            (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 (24) as 
        paragraphs (7) through (23), respectively; and
            (3) by adding at the end the following:
            ``(24) 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''.

SEC. 6. SAVINGS CLAUSE.

    Nothing in this Act shall be construed as affecting the authority 
of the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency or the 
Secretary of the Army under the following provisions of the Federal 
Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.):
            (1) Section 402(l)(1), relating to discharges composed 
        entirely of return flows from irrigated agriculture.
            (2) Section 402(l)(2), relating to discharges of stormwater 
        runoff from certain oil, gas, and mining operations composed 
        entirely of flows from precipitation runoff conveyances, which 
        are not contaminated by or in contact with specified materials.
            (3) Section 404(f)(1)(A), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials from normal farming, silviculture, and 
        ranching activities.
            (4) Section 404(f)(1)(B), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials for the purpose of maintenance of currently 
        serviceable structures.
            (5) Section 404(f)(1)(C), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials for the purpose of construction or 
        maintenance of farm or stock ponds or irrigation ditches and 
        maintenance of drainage ditches.
            (6) Section 404(f)(1)(D), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials for the purpose of construction of temporary 
        sedimentation basins on construction sites, which do not 
        include placement of fill material into the waters of the 
        United States.
            (7) Section 404(f)(1)(E), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials for the purpose of construction or 
        maintenance of farm roads or forest roads or temporary roads 
        for moving mining equipment in accordance with best management 
        practices.
            (8) Section 404(f)(1)(F), relating to discharges of dredged 
        or fill materials resulting from activities with respect to 
        which a State has an approved program under section 208(b)(4) 
        of such Act meeting the requirements of subparagraphs (B) and 
        (C) of that section.
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