NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Rep. Kenny Titus, a member of the House Water Committee and former chief counsel to the Kansas Department of Agriculture, says the rule narrowing the federal government's jurisdiction on Waters of the United States is good for Kansas, because KDHE was already doing the regulating necessary in that area.
"When it comes to water quality programs, Kansas has pretty robust standards in place," Titus said. "While there are places where the feds would get involved, our department of health and environment, they have an environmental section that deals with watersheds and things like that. They are usually the ones that are involved in issuing permits and dealing with a lot of these issues. Where Kansas wasn't greatly impacted, if the federal government had expanded their territory, that would have increased where the feds would come in and meddle in projects and work on people's private land."
Titus has also served as adjunct faculty to KU law on water law issues. Fundamentally, what the WOTUS ruling does is keep the federal government out of water issues that are small enough that you couldn't find them on a map.
"You do have these federal standards," Titus said. "In a lot of cases, states are allowed to take over enforcement of those provisions, or they are allowed to have stricter standards, if they want. This is an area where Kansas, historically, has actually been pretty proactive. There are other federal programs where we have not taken on the responsibility."
To drive home the point, if the water likely won't leave a state, the court held that it is not the federal government's job to regulate it, but rather that of the state where it is located. Titus sees this as consistent with the way things have been regulated in the past.
"Regulating natural resources, for the most part, has always been primarily the job of the states," Titus said. "Each state gets to decide to what full extent. There are some larger areas, like when we divide up water for the Arkansas River out west between Kansas and Colorado. There are some natural resources that flow across state boundaries, where it makes sense to have some sort of federal guidelines in place. That's true with many of our surface waters. What we put in the river at Wichita could very well end up going out into the Gulf of Mexico. It does make sense to have some broad federal protections in place, but when it comes to those resources in the state, that's primarily been the job of the states to protect their own resources, to the degree they deem appropriate."
The legislature has addressed funding for water quality issues in recent sessions, and Titus notes that those efforts have to this point helped and that agencies have not asked for additional authority.
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