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The answer: Not so much. By deferring to the state, EPA has let compliance with the CWA drag on for two decades. Some of the problems with the EPA’s proposed numeric nutrient criteria rules includes language in the narrative section that would allow huge loopholes in granting variances.
Excerpt from Craig Pittman of the The St. Pete Times:
‘Glacial’ cleanup pace The whole thing could have been avoided, Nelson said, if the EPA had just done its job instead of waiting to be sued. “They should have been working on it already,” Nelson said. “Just like the Everglades situation.” In the Everglades case, U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ruled in 2008 that the EPA had ignored the requirements of Clean Water Act when it allowed the Florida Legislature to extend by 22 years the deadline for cleaning up pollution flowing into the River of Grass — pollution that’s killing the Everglades. “Nothing could justify a schedule so slow and glacial as to defeat the (Clean Water Act’s) goals,” the judge wrote. “Federal law does not authorize anything like a 22-year compliance schedule.” Gold found that EPA officials in Atlanta not only allowed the state to delay the deadline, but actually coached the state in how to do so in a way that appeared to comply with the Clean Water Act. He told the EPA to force Florida to fix the problem. It did not.
