URGENT! Please act now! Dear Wetlands friends –
Below is an email I received yesterday from the “Land Rights Network”, a group dedicated to property rights, private ‘stewardship’ of public and private lands, and to the ‘wise-use’ movement.
They are actively lobbying against the revisions and strengthening of the Clean Water Act’s wetlands protections, and lobbying specifically against S.1870 (Feingold), “A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.” (companion bill is H.R.2421 , Oberstar), which in part reads:
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.’
see, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.1870: for the complete text, 1 page worth.
This bill is a critical piece of legislation, which restores and clarifies CWA jurisdiction to a number of wetlands currently taken out of protection by recent Republican actions with court assistance. Without this, most wetlands of the arid west will be without any protections under the CWA.
Please don’t let groups like the Land Rights Network and their allies take the lead in public pressure.
This comes up for vote at Senate Environment and Public Works <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/R?d110:FLD005:@3%28Senate+Environment+and+Public+Works%29> tomorrow, 12/13.
The contact info is:
*Majority Office: Barbara Boxer, Chairwoman* 410 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.Washington, DC 20510-6175 *phone: 202-224-8832, (*202) 224-1179 Deadline for Fax, E-mail is Thursday, December 20th to be considered as part of the record for this hearing.
Email at the Committee’s website/ http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.ContactForm for directly emailing the Committee. Just write your opinion NOW, and paste it into the form there.