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Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:37 am
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Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:31 pm
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Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:07 am
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Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:49 pm
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He did not. Actually, this is Constitutionally impossible. The Clean Water Act was signed into law before Bush was even president, and as you recall from high school civics class the president lacks legislative powers, which would be required to repeal a law. I think what you're confusing this with is an executive order that Clinton signed on his parting days in office that would have cut the arsenic levels in drinking water from 50 ppb to 10 ppb. Bush reversed the order (which was directed to the EPA) upon assuming office. Now, mind you, the arsenic level of 50 ppb was set in the 1940s, and since then live expectancy has increased by more than ten years, so appearantly this is not the biggest health risk to mankind that there is (especially considering only highly developed nations could ever dream of reaching a 10 ppb level in drinking water). Possibly you have conflated this act with recent decisions out of the Supreme Court that have found that the Act overreached or did not apply in certain instances of water regulation. Most of these involve the power of CWA to cover waters that are fully contained within a state or are not navigable (the legal basis for CWA is the Commerce Clause, not the Disposal Clause). Neither the court's decisions, nor Bush's repeal of a tangential EPA finding serve to legislatively repeal the Act.
So, I'm glad you agree with me that the acts are still illegal. By very definition the fact that it is illegal means the government is already trying to stop the aforementioned conduct. And, rest assured, even if you repealed the CWA tomorrow, dumping hazardous waste in the manner you described still violates scads of state and federal laws. Failing to properly dispose of hazardous waste itself is a crime irrespective of if it contaminates a water source or not. So even if you reinstate all the unconstitutionally overreaching provisions of CWA, the dumping you talked about would still occur. They were already violating state and federal laws when they did it, tacking one more law on that they would have violated wouldn't have made a difference. It's like saying we need to make an anti-rape law so the government can try to stop rapists; it's already against the law and people still do it, more laws won't help.
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Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:13 pm
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Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:41 pm
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