WOC Testifies at U.S. Senate Hearing on Clean Water Action Plan

by Nancy Debevoise

On May 13, WOC executive director Dan Heilig testified before a hearing by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the federal Clean Water Action Plan. Implementation of the Plan is aggressively opposed by Governor Geringer, the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. The vast majority of other states support the plan.

In February, the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts (WACD) announced its intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to block the Plan’s implementation in Wyoming. Underlying this effort, Heilig told Committee member, "is a fear that identifying watersheds that fail to meet clean-water requirements or other natural-resource goals could ultimately lead to restrictions on the amount of pollutants like animal waste and fertilizers that are now fouling Wyoming’s streams, rivers and lakes."

Heilig testified that in 1996, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) listed more than 360 stream segments as water-quality limited, and therefore requiring watershed-restoration strategies. "As far as the Districts were concerned," he testified, "the larger the list the better, since the availability of federal funds was based in part on the presence of impaired water quality."

Later, when the state’s conservation districts learned that clean-up actions could be required for impaired stream segments, they persuaded the DEQ to remove more than 300 segments from the list. Their gambit paid off: last year, EPA approved Wyoming’s list of only 63 water-quality limited stream segments.

Heilig noted that Wyoming is the only state in the nation that has refused to prepare a unified watershed assessment identifying priority watersheds in need of restoration and report that information to EPA. "This failure should not be construed as evidence that we have no water-quality problems in Wyoming," he said. "Rather, it reflects the Conservation Districts’ concerns that identifying damaged watersheds could trigger restrictions on land use or mandatory imposition of best-management practices."

In addition, Heilig testified, "Wyoming’s triennial review of its surface-water standards, required by the Clean Water Act, is nearly a decade behind schedule. This delay, combined with inadequate oversight by EPA, means that many of Wyoming’s surface-water standards fail to meet even minimum federal requirements."

Further, he said, "Although antidegradation provisions are a critical element of the Clean Water Act, Wyoming’s water-quality standards still lack this mandatory provision, 27 years after passage of the Act. As a result, many of the state’s high-quality waters have been unlawfully degraded by point and non-point source pollution."

To make matters worse, Heilig told Committee members, the Wyoming State Legislature recently passed two laws that directly conflict with federal pollution-control measures and frustrate the water-quality enhancement goals of the Clean Water Act. "One of the bills severely restricts the kinds of data DEQ may use in determining water-quality impairment," he said, "thus preventing DEQ from considering such obvious forms of pollution as oil slicks, floating scum and fish kills.

As a result, Heilig concluded, "citizens in Wyoming today are involved in a pitched battle to prevent the further weakening of water-quality standards by special interests that seem determined to maintain the status quo. It is our hope that the availability of federal dollars and other benefits provided by the Plan and the successes of neighboring states may eventually entice the DEQ and Wyoming’s Conservation Districts back into the business of restoring damaged watersheds."