By: Seliger S.C.R. No. 32
(In the Senate - Filed March 11, 2011; March 16, 2011, read
first time and referred to Committee on Natural Resources;
May 4, 2011, reported favorably by the following vote: Yeas 8,
Nays 1, 1 present not voting; May 4, 2011, sent to printer.)
SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Individual state governments have traditionally
held jurisdiction over intrastate water resources, but S. 787,
111th Cong. (2009), and H.R. 5088, 111th Cong. (2010), would expand
the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, widely known as the Clean
Water Act, to extend federal jurisdiction from "navigable waters of
the United States" to "waters of the United States," defined to
include "all other waters, such as intrastate lakes, rivers,
streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats,
wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or
natural ponds"; and
WHEREAS, Not only would such changes involve the federal
government in inefficient and cumbersome efforts to regulate highly
localized water resources, such as abandoned pits and ponds, but
this definition also grants the United States Environmental
Protection Agency broad and vague flexibility to interpret federal
jurisdiction expansively, which the agency has attempted to do
under the current law and with which the United States Supreme Court
has disagreed; in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v.
United States Army Corps of Engineers (2001) and Rapanos v. United
States (2006), the supreme court held that the Clean Water Act was
not intended to grant federal authority over intrastate waters and
that these waters were not subject to regulation under the
Interstate Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment of the United States
Constitution preserves powers not delegated to the federal
government for the states, establishing federalism and state
sovereignty as integral founding principles of American
government; recent proposals by Congress to amend the Clean Water
Act represent a clear attempt to diminish the sovereignty of states
by depriving them of their jurisdiction over intrastate waters and
placing all water resources under the control of the federal
government; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the 82nd Legislature of the State of Texas
hereby express its opposition to any attempt by the federal
government to diminish the jurisdiction of individual states over
their intrastate water resources; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
* * * * *