UPDATE: On April 15, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and N.C. Attorney General submitted comments on behalf of North Carolina in opposition to the draft Waters of the United States proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Read the full comment filed today on the proposed WOTUS rule here.

The comments note that some wetlands protections would be rolled back if the rule were approved. Wetlands cover an estimated 5.7 million acres (8,906 square miles) of North Carolina, or 17% of the land area of the state.

The changes fail to protect waters that are crucial to restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical and biological integrity of our state’s waters.

The comments advocate for a science-based approach to defining WOTUS that preserves features essential for water quality while providing clarity to the regulated community.

April 15 carries a lot on the to-do list.

Not only is it tax day, it is the last day to comment on a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency to change wording in the Clean Water Act that conservation groups say would have dramatically detrimental impacts to rivers, streams and wetlands across the country, including to the French Broad River and its watershed.

(See link to comment at www.regulations.gov).

The Clean Water Act sets standards for pollutants to protect drinking water and surface waters with the goal of making them swimmable and fishable.

According to the Associated Press, President Donald Trump said when the EPA’s proposed Clean Water Act rollbacks were announced in January that farmers would benefit the most.

But under long-standing federal law and rules, farmers and farmland already are exempt from most clean water regulations. Because of that, environmental groups say that builders, oil and gas drillers and other industry owners would be the big winners if the government adopts the pending rollback, which would make it easier to fill in bogs, creeks and streams for plowing, drilling, mining or building.

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There is a general notion with the current administration that anything that is a regulation is bad, even if they are rules that keep our drinking water and rivers clean or gets closer to having them clean,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center in North Carolina.

What the EPA is proposing is a new definition for “Waters of the United States,” which are essentially all surface waters that are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

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The proposed rule would strip away protection from smallest streams, the ephemeral ones that flow after a rainfall, Gisler said.

The change would also take away protections of wetlands that are found next to rivers and streams if they are not right up against the bank of river.

“We know all these little streams make up our big streams. When we get down to the French Broad River, if we haven’t been able to protect all these small streams, we won’t be able to protect the French Broad River,” Gisler said. “Particularly in the French Broad and big rivers is where we will see the combined effect of losing all these protections on smaller streams.”

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Hartwell Carson, the French Broad Riverkeeper, who has been monitoring water pollution on the French Broad River for the past 13 years, said if passed, the rollbacks would impact the French Broad, which is fed by many of these streams throughout Western North Carolina.

“It’s going to restrict what streams are covered under the Clean Water Act and that’s ultimately a really bad thing because the Clean Water Act is the tool that’s gotten us as far as we’ve come in cleaning up the French Broad,” Carson said.

“It will dramatically shrink the miles of streams protected, which is almost certainly going to mean more pollution,” he said.

The EPA is taking public comment through April. To comment, go to www.regulations.gov and click on “Revised Definition of Waters of the United States.”