Washington, D.C. — Today the House voted largely along party lines to pass the PERMIT Act. The legislation would weaken the Clean Water Act, one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, in serious ways, including by:

• Reducing clean water protections across the board: Creates an enormous loophole that could exclude entire categories of waterways from the Act’s protections altogether.
• Enabling PFAS and agricultural pollution: Allows discharges of toxic factory farm waste and pesticides without Clean Water Act permits and makes it harder to regulate emerging contaminants like PFAS.
• Speeding fossil fuel expansion: Drastically limits state and Tribal review of polluting federally-permitted projects like fossil fuel pipelines, including the Constitution pipelines proposed for New York.

Additionally, the House is expected to vote next week on the similarly dangerous SPEED Act. The SPEED Act would gut the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act, allowing corporations and factory farms to poison communities with limited to no federal oversight.

In response, Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen said:

“The PERMIT Act is an explicit assault on the Clean Water Act – one of America’s most critical bedrock environmental laws. The impact of this bill would be bleak: a return to the bad old days  of unchecked industrial pollution, rivers on fire, contaminated drinking water, poisoned communities and people getting sick. We would all pay the price for this shameful Republican ploy.

“Clean water is under attack in America. For more than half a century, the Clean Water Act has protected communities from corporate polluters. Rapidly evolving threats from PFAS chemicals, to fossil fuel pipelines, to factory farm waste mean we must fortify our defenses — not eviscerate them. Instead of cracking down on industrial water pollution, House Republicans are voting to encourage it. The PERMIT and SPEED Acts must be dead on arrival in the Senate.”

Food & Water Watch works in the courts to ensure that the Clean Water Act lives up to its promise. Recent litigation has compelled the EPA to consider revisions to its factory farm and slaughterhouse regulations, revisit its nationwide pollution standards for seven other major industry sectors, and incorporate pollution monitoring requirements in factory farm discharge permits. Food & Water Watch is currently working to strengthen state factory farm permits in Michigan, Montana, Colorado, and Washington and using the state Clean Water Act review process to fight the NESE and Constitution pipelines.

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