Hello, this is Congressman John Dingell and welcome to my podcast.

Before the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the waters of this country were treated as little more than open sewers. Industry and government were free to pollute with impunity, and our nation's waterways suffered tremendously the health of people and the lives of fish and wildlife were made miserable. The Clean Water Act changed all this. Now some 30 years later, America's waters are safer and the rate of wetlands loss has declined by 75 percent.

I was one of the architects of the 1972 Clean Water Act. The legislative history of the Clean Water Act clearly and unambiguously states that the statute applies to all the waters of the United States. I know this because I personally included it in the legislative history in the Congressional Record in 1972.

I included in the Congressional Record that the term "navigable waters" consists of all "the waters of the United States" including main streams and their tributaries.

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Rapanos v. US and Carabell v. US remanding the Clean Water case back to the lower courts has muddled the intent of Congress and completely distorted the purpose of the Clean Water Act. This decision poses a threat to waters across the country.

I will continue to fight for the Clean Water Act and Congress's original meaning and intention. Congressman Jim Oberstar and I have introduced HR 1356, the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act of 2005, and we currently have 158 sponsors. We're working on more.

The Clean Water Authority Restoration Act includes a set of findings that explain the factual basis for Congress to assert its constitutional authority over waters and wetlands. It also reaffirms the original intent of the Congress by creating a statutory definition of "waters of the United States" based on longstanding definitions in the Army Corps of Engineers regulations.

Finally, the legislation deletes the term "navigable" from the Act to reinforce that Congress' original concern in 1972 Act related to pollution and the protection of the waters rather than navigability.

While 5 members of the Court rejected the most extreme mangling of the Act proposed by Justice Scalia and others that would eliminate all Clean Water Act protections for more than 50 percent of the nation's wetlands and streams, the fact that there was no clear majority upholding the current Clean Water Act authorities as they now exist poses a very real threat to waters across this country and to the health of our people and to the lives and existence of our fish and wildlife.

As a Representative elected by the people, I will continue to stand up for their wellbeing and for the safety of our waters and for your health and for the protection and the values we all hold with regards to the outdoors.

This is John Dingell. Thank you for listening.