Rain Tax, Elk Bones, & More
Here's the latest dispatch.
Good morning!
Welcome to Outsider on the Inside. I hope this dispatch from in and around the nation’s capital on underreported topics finds you well.
If you’re just discovering my musings, here’s a backgrounder.
Here’s what I have for you today:
A Rain Tax Won’t Save the Chesapeake Bay
“I always say this too: the Chesapeake Bay does not really care if money is coming towards it from a rain tax or a bag tax,” the two-term councilman observed. “It doesn't even care if you give it $200 million or $20 million…what it cares is that the water is properly treated, and that it's kept healthy.”
Listen and watch my exclusive interview with Fairfax City Councilman Sang Yi, one of two dissenting votes against the city’s new rain tax, about the implications of this new policy.
Next ‘Conservation Nation’ Video: Bear Conservation in the GYE
Coming Soon…Until then, here’s a teaser.
IWF: EPA Revokes Reasonable Navigable Waters Protection Rule
Despite EPA Administrator Michael Regan claiming that “he doesn’t intend to pull the Obama-rule off the shelf,” and discussing how much they’ve learned since 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is undoing the Trump-era Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR), returning the definition of “navigable waters” to a murky “significant nexus” parameter. In turn, the Biden administration intends to restore rule parameters back to the controversial 2015 “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule to the Clean Water Act.
The Biden administration has called for restoring and recodifying WOTUS to pre-existing Obama administration-era rules, which broadly defined if waters had “significant nexus” to jurisdictional waters.
Environment Law and Policy noted how lopsided and complex the Obama-era rule was, writing, “Determining if waters had a “significant nexus” to jurisdictional waters under the 2015 rule often required case-specific analysis or the hiring of a consultant to assist with a jurisdictional determination and sometimes led to inconsistent application of the rule in different regions.
Podcasts You May Have Missed
Here are District of Conservation episodes you may have missed.
EP 235: Governor-elect Youngkin to Pull Virginia from RGGI & Biden Admin Repeals Trump-Era WOTUS Rule
EP 236: You Don't Need a Rain Tax to Save the Chesapeake Bay (ft. Fairfax City Councilman Sang Yi)
Catch up on all past episodes below:
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—Gabriella