The Farm Bureau and construction groups are united in their support to get WOTUS right. I think the American Road and Transportation Builders (ARTBA) summed up the most recent action succinctly.
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Tag: Clean water act
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The Supreme Court’s Clean Water Act decision restricting the federal government’s jurisdiction over “adjacent” wetlands prompted warnings that millions of acres of wetlands could be at risk, but the ruling generated cheers from farm groups that have fought for decades to limit the interpretation of the 50-year-old law.
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The legal battle is on over the Biden administration’s new “waters of the U.S.” rule. Some major farm groups joined with the oil, real estate and construction sectors to file a lawsuit Thursday evening seeking to block implementation of the rule that redefines the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.
The lawsuit says the rule extends federal jurisdiction to a “staggering range of dry land and water features—whether large or small; permanent, intermittent, or ephemeral; flowing or stagnant; natural or manmade; interstate or intrastate; and no matter how remote from or lacking in a physical connection to actual navigable waters.”
The plaintiffs include the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Petroleum Institute, Associated General Contractors of America and the National Association of Realtors.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a case that could force the Biden administration to modify the new WOTUS rule.
The Trump administration’s proposed new definition of “waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act is either a radical policy shift that misinterprets Supreme Court precedent and will leave up to 70 percent of tributaries and half the nation’s wetlands unprotected, or it’s a constitutionally valid approach to regulating the nation’s waters that preserves the states’ lead role over water pollution control and land use planning.
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The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) provided comments to the Environmental Protection Agency in a letter regarding proposed changes to certain provisions of the Clean Water Act.
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The Supreme Court will take another shot at deciding the scope of the Clean Water Act, granting a petition to determine whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit "set forth the proper test for determining whether wetlands are 'waters of the United States'" under the CWA.
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EPA Administrator Michael Regan has said repeatedly he wants to craft a “durable” definition of “waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act — one informed by Supreme Court precedent and input from a variety of stakeholders.
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Representatives of state farm bureaus, as well as individual farmers and ranchers, spoke out in favor of keeping the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule in place at an online meeting today.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have already said they are concerned about the damaging effects of the 2020 rule on the nation's waters and are working towards developing a replacement.
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