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Senators refine S.124 to use 'waters of the state,' add stakeholder experts after EPA feedback
Summary
Sen. Ruth Hardy told the Senate Agriculture Committee that S.124 was edited after EPA feedback and that the chief substantive change was adopting the "waters of the state" definition; the bill won a 4-0-1 vote in the Senate Natural Resources Committee and is expected to be attached to a miscellaneous act and reviewed in Finance.
Sen. Ruth Hardy of the Addison District said Wednesday that changes to S.124 were largely clarifications and edits made after the Environmental Protection Agency returned comments on earlier draft language.
The senator said the major substantive change in the version now before the committee was replacing a federal definition with a state definition — "the 1 substantive change that we made, was going with the state the waters of the state versus waters of United States." She told the Senate Agriculture Committee that lawmakers made that choice to match other state water-quality programs and to reduce confusion caused by frequent federal changes.
The revisions also added water-quality advocates and technical experts to a stakeholder process and made explicit references to the Clean Water Act, Hardy said. "We did add, the water quality advocates, and experts…
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