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| **Chris Lish \<lishchris@yahoo.com\>** |
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| 01/21/2008 12:34 AM                    |
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Water Docket, Environmental Protection Agency

Mailcode: 2822T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20460

Dear EPA and Corps staff,

I urge you to withdraw the June 2007 guidance document issued by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers
(Corps) aimed at implementing the Supreme Court\'s decision in Rapanos
v. United States. This document is fundamentally flawed because it does
not fully protect the water bodies that the agencies have the authority
and responsibility to safeguard, even considering the Supreme Court\'s
decisions in Rapanos and the 2001 SWANCC case. I urge you to withdraw
this guidance and issue a replacement document that protects waters to
the fullest extent that the Clean Water Act allows.

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the
environment."

\-- Ansel Adams

Like capillaries to arteries, small streams, wetlands and other similar
bodies of water are connected to our nation\'s larger lakes, rivers and
oceans. Even if there is no visible standing water in these pools or
flowing water connecting these seasonal wetlands to larger bodies of
water, there is almost always water just below the surface. These small
waters are essential to the health of people, fish and wildlife. We
cannot have clean water and productive wildlife habitats unless these
waters are protected.

The federal Clean Water Act safeguards our waters against pollution and
destruction. For 30 years, it was clear that the Act protected all
important bodies of water, including small streams, wetlands and other
waters. Now, due to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions and consequent
actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps
of Engineers (Corps), the integrity of all waters is in peril.

\"Every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and
of wild life, should strike hands with the farsighted men who wish to
preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and
our game beasts, game-birds, and game-fish-indeed, all the living
creatures of prairie and woodland and seashore-from wanton destruction.
Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is
essentially a democratic movement.\"

\-- Theodore Roosevelt

The June 2007 \"guidance\" interpreting the current legal scope of
waters protected by the Clean Water Act and instructing field officials
how to implement recent Supreme Court case law further endangers our
waters. The guidance is not as protective as the law allows. The
guidance document mistakenly leaves in place a 2003 policy that has
contributed to the loss of Clean Water Act protection for countless
so-called \"isolated\" water bodies. This policy is scientifically
unwise and legally unsound, yet the EPA and Corps are simply ignoring
these problems, even after the U.S. House of Representatives told the
EPA to stop following the \"isolated\" waters policy. Although an
earlier Supreme Court case has limited whether your agencies may use one
particular rationale to protect such waters, the EPA and the Corps
retain significant authority to prevent their pollution and destruction.
But this authority is plainly being neglected, since these waters are
regularly being declared unprotected. This will lead to water pollution
and destruction of wildlife habitat.

The consequences of not protecting these wetlands are staggering. Across
the U.S., there are approximately 20 million acres of \"isolated\"
wetlands and nearly 2 million miles of streams that do not flow
year-round. For many of these important bodies of water, protection is
now unclear.

"Shortsighted men \... in their greed and selfishness will, if
permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless
extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things."

\-- Theodore Roosevelt

The new guidance is also flawed because it questions whether certain
kinds of tributary streams may be protected. Although tributaries to
protected waters have been protected for many years, the guidance would
protect tributaries that are not \"relatively permanent\" only if it can
be shown that they are \"significant\" enough, using the guidance\'s
vague standards. The Supreme Court did not establish any new rules
restricting protections for tributary streams; doing so in this guidance
threatens a great number of non-perennial streams, which constitute
nearly 60 percent of the stream miles outside of Alaska.

"No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which requires the
world as made especially for the use of man. Every animal, plant and
crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from
century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged."

\-- John Muir

Finally, even though the Supreme Court\'s decision left your agencies a
great deal of flexibility to protect the nation\'s wetlands when they
collectively contribute to water quality, the guidance takes a very
narrow view of when it is appropriate to consider such cumulative
effects. The likely result is that more streams and wetlands will be
found to be insignificant and, therefore, unprotected. The resulting
adverse impact on water quality will almost certainly be substantial,
threatening the safety of drinking water, the quality of waters where we
fish and swim, and the health of wildlife that depend on clean water.

\"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the
land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result
in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we
ought by right to hand down to them amplified\...\"

\-- Theodore Roosevelt

Therefore, I urge the EPA and the Corps to rethink and revise your
current interpretation of the Supreme Court\'s decision and the Clean
Water Act. Please use your significant remaining legal authority to
provide stronger and clearer protections America\'s entire system of
water bodies and its interrelated components, especially headwater
streams, \"isolated\" waters and many wetlands associated with smaller
streams. Primarily, the guidance should uphold current broad regulations
to the extent allowable. As importantly, it must permit the
consideration of the overwhelming collective importance of upstream and
isolated waters to the health of downstream waters.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability,
and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise."

\-- Aldo Leopold, The Conservation Ethic

However, this guidance is yet another example of why the current state
of the law is confusing and untenable. Even with revisions to the
guidance, certainty is needed from Congress that all important waters
remain protected. As such, I am copying this letter to my U.S. Senators
and Representative so they are aware of my concerns about your guidance
and to urge them to pass legislation to reaffirm and restore protections
for all waters.

"Our duty to the whole, including to the unborn generations, bids us to
restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage
of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of
wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural
resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method."

\-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

Thank you for allowing me to submit my views. Please do NOT add my name
to your mailing list. I will learn about future developments on this
issue from other sources.

Sincerely,

Christopher Lish

PO Box 113

Olema, CA 94950