“Last year’s Supreme Court decision in the Rapanos case seriously jeopardized our nation’s waters and was completely at odds with Congress’s intent when it passed the Clean Water Act 35 years ago. While the EPA has offered its guidance in interpreting the decision, it is clearly up to Congress to end the legal wrangling over one of our country’s fundamental public health and environmental laws. The Clean Water Act was intended to preserve all of our nation’s waters, not just sustain the navigability of some of them. In the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling, Congress must pass the Clean Water Restoration Act to preserve all of our nation’s waters, which are so important to the health and vitality of our country.”

Senator Feingold has led the fight in the U.S. Senate to reaffirm the protections provided over thirty years ago in the Clean Water Act for our nation’s rivers, streams, and wetlands and recently announced he would reintroduce legislation to do so. The Clean Water Act was passed by Congress in 1972 and the U.S. Senate reconfirmed the broad scope of the law again in 1977 when it rejected—by a strong, bipartisan vote - a proposal to remove federal protections from a smaller category of wetlands and other waters.