NASHVILLE — Sixty-three Tennessee lawmakers today urged state Attorney General Herbert Slatery to join a federal lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s new rule allowing the government to regulate tributaries to rivers and streams under the Clean Water Act.
Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, said in a news release she and other lawmakers want Slatery to join the suit filed by 27 states challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s new “waters of the U.S. rule.”
“I understand there is a cost to litigation,” said Butt. “However, the cost of implementing this rule to the agriculture industry and the personal property rights of Tennesseans would be far more devastating.”
Herbert SlateryGeorgia Attorney General Sam Olens and attorneys general from seven other states initially filed the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of EPA’s new rule. It redefines states’ streams, creeks, ponds and wetlands as the “waters of the United States.”
Such regulation has traditionally been left up to states.