WATER POLICY:
Senate Dems ask Obama admin to clarify how rule proposal affects farmers
Annie Snider, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, August 1, 2014
U.S. EPA’s recent efforts to clear up confusion among farmers and ranchers about a controversial proposed water rule and an accompanying interpretive rule haven’t satisfied key Senate Democrats.
Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and a dozen of her Democratic colleagues asked the Obama administration yesterday to clarify what the proposal — aimed at defining which streams and wetlands fall under the protection of the Clean Water Act — and the interpretive rule mean for farmers.
“While we have long been supporters of the Clean Water Act protecting our nation’s water resources, we want to make sure that the proposed jurisdictional rule and the interpretive rule do not have unintended effects on agriculture and on the conservation practices currently used by many of our nation’s farmers and ranchers,” they wrote to the leaders of EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Agriculture,
The regulatory proposal has drawn staunch opposition — and a robust lobbying effort — from some of the country’s most powerful agricultural groups, while other groups are still trying to figure out what it would mean for their members.
Supporters of the rule take it as a good sign that the Democrats — including Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who is facing a tough re-election battle and last year voted for an unsuccessful effort to block the proposal — are working within the rulemaking process rather than calling for it to be withdrawn.
“We are encouraged by Senator Hagan’s continued support for the current rulemaking process that will ultimately result in better protections for America’s waters,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, in a statement.
Most of the senators’ questions deal with the interpretive rule, which the agency has said was intended to lay out what the regulatory proposal would mean for the agricultural sector and encourage conservation. But EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy herself has acknowledged that the interpretive rule has done little but stir up more confusion and indicated she’s open to changes on it (Greenwire, July 11).
The senators’ letter expresses concern that the confusion around the interpretive rule could discourage conservation efforts.
Before the interpretive rule was released with a list of conservation practices that would be exempt from Clean Water Act permitting, “the idea that conservation practices could ever trigger CWA permitting did not exist,” they wrote. They ask whether the practices would have required a permit before and whether conservation practices not on the list would now.
The senators also ask the agencies to define key terms in the proposed rule that they suggest could clear up confusion about whether water running off farm fields could fall under federal jurisdiction. And they ask for clarification about whether farm ditches in floodplains would fall under the rule’s exemptions for ditches — a major source of confusion within the agricultural community (Greenwire, July 16).
In addition to Stabenow and Hagan, the letter is signed by Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Mark Warner of Virginia and Michael Bennet of Colorado.
Twitter: @AnnElizabeth18 | Email: asnider@eenews.net
Tags: policy, water