Ag Policy Blog
Pondering EPA's River of Dreams
"In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep, through the desert of truth, to the river so deep. We all end in the ocean; we all start in the streams. We're all carried along, by the river of dreams. In the middle of the night," -- Billy Joel, who missed his calling as an EPA water-quality regulator.
The last few weeks have turned into a watershed moment for the Environmental Protection Agency in pondering Billy Joel's lyrics from "River of Dreams."
In succession, EPA has won a court ruling saying it has authority to regulate. The agency then submitted a new rule that could broaden definitions of who is regulated and why. EPA then lost a court case that effectively said the agency needs to explain why it has chosen not to regulate.
A federal judge in the Chesapeake Bay case determined EPA was within its authority to oversee state rules and enforcement of water pollution controls to clean up the bay. Agricultural groups had sued after the Obama administration's executive order requiring EPA to step in. The case was sort of a Hail Mary for the major farm organizations considering there was nearly 40 years of case law on efforts to clean up the bay.
Just a few days after the Chesapeake ruling, EPA released a draft report from its science advisory board explaining how small streams and other bodies of water are connected to rivers and other bigger bodies of water. The report is mean to join EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rulemaking under the Clean Water Act. A draft version of the proposed rule was sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget last week.
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Officials from EPA's Water Office explained the report and possible rule in a blog posting last week. http://blog.epa.gov/…
EPA has opened its draft report to public comment until Nov. 6. The draft EPA report can be found here. http://cfpub.epa.gov/…
Effectively, this could translate into more regulations around most wetlands and the most insignificant of streams. The Hill reported Monday that the National Federation of Independent Businesses is sending a letter to EPA today stating that the agency is violating a 1996 law that requires federal agencies to consult with small businesses over such regulations. According to The Hill report, NFIB stated that landowners who develop the land without permission face fined up to $37,500 a day.
"The EPA is pursuing a significant expansion of federal jurisdiction that will necessarily exert more government control over private landowners, which includes small business owners,” the group writes. “While multinational corporations with tremendous capital resources might be able to afford such.”
Following the Chesapeake ruling, DTN reported Monday about yet another ruling in the Mississippi River basin. A federal judge in Louisiana ruled that EPA must respond to five-year old request from environmental groups to consider tougher pollution controls on chemicals just as nitrogen and phosphorus in the Mississippi River basin. In other words, the environmental groups argue EPA isn't treating the Mississippi watershed with the same regulatory oversight as the Chesapeake.
Specifically, groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council note that nitrogen and phosphorus demand more regulatory oversight by states, including rules about just how much of either fertilizer should be allowed in streams, rivers or lakes.
Given that everything flows downhill, (another pun) farmers and ranchers are going to facing far more challenges ahead with water quality at about the same time the Senate and House Agriculture Committees have opted to cut anywhere $3.6 billion to $4.8 billion from conservation spending over the next decade, mainly by trimming Conservation Reserve Program acres.
One unknown in the farm-bill conference talks is whether conservation compliance would be tied to eligibility for crop insurance premium subsidies. At the rate EPA water rules, regulations and demands could change over the next five years, fighting over minimum conservation measures seems almost laughable at this point.
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