freshare.net
Jefferson City, Mo. - Attorney General Jay Nixon is challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in order to stop an EPA decision that could help pave the way for the transfer of water from the Missouri River basin to the Red River basin. As the leading proponent for Missouri’s interests in the Missouri River, Nixon has opposed plans for out-of-basin transfers for more than 15 years.
Nixon was joined by the Attorneys General of eight other states and by the Canadian province of Manitoba in a lawsuit filed today in federal court in New York. The states and Manitoba want to reverse a decision by the EPA to change the long-standing rule that requires federal Clean Water Act permits for discharges of polluted water from one water body to another. The lawsuit seeks to have the Court invalidate the EPA’s June 9, 2008 regulation and declare the water transfer loophole illegal.
“I have been quite vocal in my long-standing opposition to the plan to take water from the Missouri River and send it to the Red River basin,” Nixon said. “There is a very real danger that the concerns of Missourians for reliable drinking water supplies and power production, as well as protection of agriculture and navigation, will be harmed by this decision if it is not reversed.”
Federal clean water permits provide protection to water resources across the country, Nixon said. The action by the EPA, if left unchecked, would allow anyone to transfer saltwater into fresh water, sediment-laden water into clear drinking water reservoirs, and warm water into cold-water habitats, such as trout streams, Nixon said. In the case of the plan to divert Missouri River water, Nixon warned, there also would be the very real possibility of transferring non-native species of fish between watersheds.
Missouri and the other states are arguing that nothing in the federal Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to eliminate the permit requirement for these transfers. In fact, Nixon said, the EPA’s position has twice been rejected by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as by a federal district court in Florida.