The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created by the Nixon administration in 1970 to coordinate the welter of confusing, often ineffective environmental protection laws enacted by states and communities.

The Clean Water ACT of the EPA sets and enforces national water pollution-control standards to protect the viability and purity of our nation’s rivers and lakes.

The Clean Water RULE of 1972 expanded that mandate to include smaller streams, wetlands and seasonal riparian catchments; dry areas that become wetlands during rainy seasons. Many of these smaller watercourses and dry marshes are located on private property.

For example, Chesapeake Bay, the East coast’s largest crab and oyster fishery was polluted and dying from agricultural waste and chemical runoff from upstream farms. To clean up and rehabilitate the bay (a process still underway) the EPA mandated and enforced measures affecting both privately owned farms and the public river and bay.

Real Estate Mogul in Chief Trump and his tame EPA administrator, coal company lobbyist and climate change denier Andrew Wheeler, are now trying to rescind the EPA’s Clean Water Rule. They opine that the Clean Water Rule is the biggest Federal power grab and greatest threat to private property rights in this century.

Actually, neglecting to pay your property taxes remains the greatest threat to your property “rights.” We don’t own our fields and streams. The nation leases them to us and expects us to not destroy or pollute them.

To feckless industrial and residential real estate property developers, EPA regulation and restriction of their ambitions are a Federal “power grab.” Their capitalist mantra is, “A thing is only worth what it can be sold for.”

I disagree. Some things, like abundant clean water and air, are priceless and well worth the cost of regulations to keep them that way.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island