In January, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new rule to restrict the Clean Water Act's (CWA) Section 401. This regulation, which Congress passed in the 1970s, empowers state and tribal governments to reject or approve permits for federal projects they believe will harm state and local water quality. In proposing this rule, the EPA seeks to weaken local and state oversight of federal infrastructural projects, like coal plants, pipelines, and LNG export facilities, near waterways and their resulting impacts on wildlife and local communities.
Add your name to this petition urging the EPA to withdraw this harmful proposed rule!
Comment Submitted to Federal Register Docket No. EPA-HQ-OW-2025-2929
Dear EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin,
We, the undersigned, write to express our strong opposition to the EPA's proposed rule to change procedural requirements for water quality certification under Clean Water Act (CWA) section 401. The proposed rule's regulatory changes would reduce the ability of states and tribes to evaluate the overall impacts of a federal infrastructure project on local waterways. We strongly urge you to withdraw the proposed rule and preserve Clean Water Act Section 401 as it is currently written.
The Clean Water Act empowers states and tribes to examine how federal infrastructure projects, including pipelines, may impact local water quality. When a state or tribe determines that an infrastructure project harms local waterways, they can leverage Section 401 of the Clean Water Act to reject infrastructure permits. In 2023, the Biden Administration empowered states and tribes to consider all the ways in which infrastructure projects affect water quality, including the risk of spills, possible harms to local wildlife, and impacts on cultural resources.
The reduced scope of Section 401 under the proposed rule could result in damage to waterways other than through direct pollution; it could cut off drinking water, disrupt the migration of aquatic animals, and destroy natural floodplains. The proposed rule would also narrow the scope of tribal oversight by requiring that they evaluate projects through a separate authorization program. If finalized, this proposed rule would impose greater demands on tribes to prove that they have large-scale capacity to undergo a rigorous review of federal projects, even as much of the country grapples with restricted local government funding. Reducing the scope of the Clean Water Act's Section 401 to only account for how direct discharges into waterways impact water quality will hinder the ability of state and tribal governments to fully consider how projects impact local communities and wildlife, with possible threats to public health, natural environments, and local economies.
Because of the ways in which the proposed rule would limit states and tribes' ability to fully protect local waterways and the communities that depend on them, we strongly urge the EPA to withdraw the rule. Instead, the EPA should maintain Section 401 of the Clean Water Act as it is currently written.
Sincerely,
