Attorney testifies on administration’s attack on Clean Water Act
Senior Attorney Geoff Gisler testifies before the subcommittee.
As the current administration’s assault on clean water protections continues to make international headlines, SELC’s own Senior Attorney Geoff Gisler was called to testify on Capitol Hill.
On September 18, he was heard before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment on the havoc that loosening those water safeguards will wreak on the nation’s waterways, and the federal government’s role in that impending disaster.
SELC submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency on each phase of its efforts to dismantle the Clean Water Act, including redefining U.S. waters in a way that removes protections from streams and wetlands, allowing more pollution, and its most recent proposal to strip states of their authorities granted under the Act.
“In each instance, we have asked this administration to do more to protect our waters,” Gisler told the subcommittee. “In each instance, it has done more to increase pollution.”
The senior attorney and leader of SELC’s Clean Water Program discussed the actions this administration is taking to rollback many of the Clean Water Act’s protections, as well as the inaction of the administration when it comes to regulating harmful emerging contaminants such as PFAS, or perfluorooctanoic acid.
Gisler reiterated to the subcommittee that the Act was written to ensure everyone does their part to keep our nation’s waters clean, fishable, and swimmable.
In conclusion, he warned, “By shifting the burden of pollution from those who create it to families and communities downstream, this administration would take us back to the era before the Clean Water Act.”
To read a full transcript of Gisler’s testimony, click here.