	Introduction

In the 110 th Congress, legislation concerning the applicability of certain environmental regulatory requirements to recreational and other types of boats was introduced. As discussed in this report, Congress passed two of these bills, S. 2766 and S. 3298 , on July 22, 2008, and President Bush subsequently signed them into law. These bills were intended to address an issue that has arisen in implementation of the Clean Water Act (CWA). In 2006, a federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revise a CWA regulation that currently exempts discharges from the normal operation of all vessels from the act's permit requirements. Further, on August 31, the federal district court approved EPA's request to delay the court's order until December 19, 2008, and EPA finalized a permit for vessels subject to a permit requirement on December 18. They reflected four approaches: (1) modifying a CWA definition to exempt discharges from recreational vessels; (2) modifying the CWA to exempt recreational vessel discharges from permitting and directing EPA to issue performance standards for discharges incidental to the normal operation of vessels; (3) directing the Coast Guard to issue national performance standards for such discharges, but exempting recreational and certain commercial vessels; and (4) temporarily exempting fishing and some commercial vessels from CWA permitting and requiring a study of impacts of vessel discharges. 110-288 ). 110-299 ).
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to develop a regulatory response to a 2006 federal court ruling that vacated a long-standing EPA rule. That rule had exempted discharges associated with the normal operation of vessels from permit requirements of the Clean Water Act. Concern that this ruling could require millions of recreational boaters to obtain permits led to the introduction of legislation in the 110th Congress to exempt these and other types of vessels from water quality regulation. This report discusses background to the issue and bills introduced in the 110th Congress in response, two of which were passed by Congress in July 2008 (S. 2766 and S. 3298). The enacted measures exempted recreational vessels from permit requirements (P.L. 110-288) and delayed permit requirements for many other but not all vessels (P.L. 110-299). EPA finalized a permit for the remaining vessels on December 18, 2008.