A substantially narrowed version of a bill introduced to grant wider “standing” for lawsuits regarding clean water is advancing in the House of Delegates – missing the general deadline for crossover to the second chamber, but still regarded as alive for passage this session. MACo had opposed the original bill, but it has since been dramatically reframed and narrowed to affect far fewer elements.
HB 1101 is tagged as the “Clean Water Justice Act” and was supported by many stakeholders in the environmental community, citing their concerns that a recent federal Supreme Court decision left Marylanders without access to the courts to engage in third party enforcement in some cases, as was the law under the federal Clean Water Act. MACo and multiple other stakeholders objected to the original bill that extended far beyond the upstream waterways affected by the federal court decision, and could have granted a large universe of stakeholders opportunities to object to nearly any development or building project that required permit or extended water/wastewater services.
The recent case Sackett v. EPA resolved the long-simmering matter of what the federal Clean Water Act meant by “waters of the United States,” in effect determining how far federal clean water enforcement extend upstream. The court decided that the term applied only to navigable waterways, consistent with a historic level of enforcement under EPA rules, rather than many more non-tidal and ephemeral waterways. See Conduit Street coverage of the “WOTUS” issue over recent years for more context on this issue.
Read the MACo testimony on HB 1101 as originally introduced.
A dramatically narrowed bill has moved in the House of Delegates, and is on the House floor for its “third reader” vote Monday, where the House should take its final vote on the bill and send it to the Senate. Supporters in the House discussed that the tighter definitions in the amended bill come far closer to merely restoring stakeholder rights on matters that were subject to the Clean Water Act under the broader interpretation of the WOTUS definition. Despite missing the crossover deadline (and likely being sent to the Senate Rules Committee as a result), most involved parties believe the compromise bill has a meaningful chance to pass this year.
Stay tuned to Conduit Street for more updates, and visit MACo’s Legislative Tracking Database for dynamic updates throughout the session.
