Consultant Floats Tool For Reconciling Competing CWA Jurisdiction Tests

摘要

An environmental consultant is calling on EPA to craft a new software tool that could "bridge the gap" between the Obama-era study on waters' connectivity that helped drive the 2015 Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule and critics of the rule pushing for a narrower CWA test using "objective" criteria applicable by laypeople. "It's not that the science is bad, it's that it's not useful and transferable to the general public," Jacqueline Bruntjen, a manager at the Pittsfield, MA, consulting firm Eco-Genesis, said during a Nov. 7 stakeholder call EPA held to hear input from academics and science groups on its planned repeal of the 2015 rule, and how to craft a replacement rule.