American Farm Bureau: EPA handling of WOTUS feedback has been "a very unusual situation"

by | Nov 19, 2014 | Audio, News

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The comment period on the Environmental Protection Agency’s waters of the U.S. rule has closed, but the fight over American waterways is far from over.

“There’s no question about it, Republicans have been pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder in opposition to the rule,” says American Farm Bureau Policy Communication Director Will Rodger. He estimates only about 35 House Democrats have formally voiced their opposition to EPA’s proposed Waters of the United States rule.

If the rule passes, American Farm Bureau is worried EPA’s jurisdiction would expand to water that collects in ditches and ponds in farm fields. Republican victories in the November mid-term elections might result in some kind of legislation to nullify WOTUS.

“So [in] the House, we’ve already had a bill passed de-funding WOTUS,” explains Rodger. “In the Senate, we’re looking at, probably, a similar situation. We would expect them to pass something once the new Senate has been seated in January. Whether it’s a direct de-funding through a separate piece of legislation, or perhaps de-funding through a spending bill that’s part of a larger omnibus, we would expect that there would be some organized opposition that will probably find some way to get something through.”

Just under half a million comments were submitted to EPA online during the public comment period on WOTUS, which ended Friday. As it considers feedback, the agency doesn’t expect to have a finalized rule until sometime in the spring of 2015.

Under the proposed rule, Rodger says all it would take for a farmer to be in violation of the Clean Water Act is something as simple as a small amount of fertilizer or dust into the dry bed of an intermittent stream, and he says the American Farm Bureau wonders how different the final rule will be.

“In our view, you’re going to have to go the EPA to get a permit for that sort of thing,” Rodger says. “The EPA says ‘Oh, no. Of course we’d never do that.’ But the odd thing is that when we sit down and talk to them about it, they’re not willing to actually change the wording of the rule. They say ‘Well, put that in your comments.’ And that’s really unusual. Typically when you talk to a negotiator and you say ‘Hey, there’s some ambiguous or problematic wording here that we’re pretty sure you don’t mean,” they’ll make that change quickly. So it’s been a very unusual situation.”>

However, EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks notes that the proposed rule is just that: a proposal.

“We haven’t even come out with a final rule yet,” says Brooks. “So I feel pretty confident in saying that the final rule will be different from the rule that people commented on during the summer. And it will be different because of those comments; I mean, this agency has genuinely tried to listen to concerns that we heard. Whether it was from ag producers, state organizations, conservation districts; and we’re genuinely committed to getting a rule out that’s simpler, clearer, and gives some certainty and predictability on the ground. [That’s] something that’s been lacking now for about 15 years.”

To hear more about EPA’s proposed rule clarifying its jurisdiction over waters of the United States, click the audio player above this story.