Species Concerns Plague Long-Awaited Revisions To Key Water Permits

摘要

The Army Corps of Engineers is struggling to address a formal finding from federal wildlife officials that recently effective revisions to dozens of its streamlined development permits, which are issued in consultation with EPA under section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), do not adequately protect endangered species. "The Corps is working internally" to address National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) so-called "jeopardy finding," Jennifer Moyer, deputy chief of the Corps' regulatory program, told a May 3 American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education conference held in Washington, DC. In its finding, which was required by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), NMFS cautioned that the Corps' Nationwide Permits (NWPs) could jeopardize 55 endangered or threatened aquatic and marine species and their habitat, a finding that is bolstering environmentalists' calls for the Corps to strengthen the permits. The NFMS biological opinion is available on InsideEPA.com.