Power Grab

Power Grab

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
The Clean Water Act has established a system of cooperative federalism that gives federal agencies—mainly EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—the authority to regulate navigable waters such as interstate rivers. The law calls these "waters of the U.S." State and local governments have jurisdiction over smaller, more-remote waters, such as many ponds and isolated wetlands, because state and local governments are more accountable to their citizens and more in touch with local environmental and economic situations. I talked with Gov. Otter and wondered if it was a power grab? "It is a power grab... It's a water grab. Remember about four or five years ago when Harry Reid decided that he wanted to create in the West a national water bank. Perhaps even an inter-basin transfer of water from one basin to another. His whole idea was bringing water out of states like Colorado and Idaho where the water is and taking it into Las Vegas where he said we could make a lot more money with that water than any farmer can. That is what he told his Nevada farmers. So there is nothing they would love more than have some agency in the federal government assume control of water. In Idaho – not can happen."
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