The 2016 Republican Platform unveiled at the party’s convention last week contains few specifics on water policy objectives for the coming years, though the document takes a hard line against EPA and regulations issued by the agency.
An anti-regulatory perspective is present throughout the document, and environmental regulations are especially targeted for criticism. The platform labels EPA’s Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule a “travesty” amid warnings that it would extend “the government’s jurisdiction over navigable waters into the micro-management of puddles and ditches … and other privately-held property.” Not only must WOTUS be “invalidated,” the platform says, but “state waters, watersheds, and groundwater must be the purview of the sovereign states.” The platform further calls for enforcement of the “original intent of the Clean Water Act, not it’s distortion by EPA regulations.”
The platform touts the environmental progress made by the United States in recent decades and argues that the “central fact of any sensible environmental policy” must recognize that “year by year, the environment is improving,” and “our air and waterways are much healthier than they were a few decades ago.” In recognition of this progress, the GOP platform calls for a shift of environmental regulatory responsibility “from the federal bureaucracy to the states,” while downgrading EPA to an “independent bipartisan commission … with structural safeguards against politicized science.”
The Republican platform makes no specific call for investment in water infrastructure, though the document concedes, “Everyone agrees on the need for clean water,” along with other critical infrastructure.
While in the past some Republican lawmakers have called for abolishing EPA and cracking down on excessive federal regulations, there remains little chance of these policies gaining traction in Congress as a result of their inclusion in the GOP platform. Like most party platforms, this one provides more of a high-level overview of the party’s vision than an agenda of specific policies that will be shepherded to enactment.