Regulatory overreach was at the top of concerns for lawmakers and farm leaders this week, as both EPA and Labor Department rules drew renewed attention.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan told a House panel his agency and the Army Corps are implementing a revised Waters of the U.S. or WOTUS rule that complies with last year鈥檚 Supreme Court ruling. Regan said, 鈥淲e鈥檝e codified the clarifications, codified and clarified exclusions in support of farmers, like prior-converted cropland, and for ranchers, like the artificial ponds used for drinking water. A lot of good things that were preserved, as well.鈥
Regan says the Army Corps resumed WOTUS determinations after the EPA revised its much-criticized earlier rule. That, after the Supreme Court rejected 9-0 last May, EPA鈥檚 鈥榮ignificant nexus test鈥 in favor of an 鈥榦bservable surface connection鈥 to a navigable water to define a wetland. He says, 鈥淲e are following the prescribed direction of the Supreme Court and want to ensure that we provide certainty to our states, as soon as possible.鈥
The 果冻直播 Farm Bureau charged EPA鈥檚 final rule was vague in defining ditches or other farm features that fill with water only sometimes, using a vestige of a much earlier Supreme Court ruling to preserve regulatory intent.
Separately, AFB says the Labor Department is 鈥渂urying farmers and other H-2A employers鈥 in 3,000 pages of rules in the last 18 months, including 600 pages just last week. AFB鈥檚 John Walt Boatright says H-2A rules and costs are already hard enough to meet.
Boatright says, 鈥淭hese new rules just exacerbate those regulatory burdens and those costs even further. So, it鈥檚 going to lead to a lot of farmers, particularly small family farms, to have to make some pretty significant decisions.鈥
Boatright says only Congress can reform Ag labor laws but has failed to do so for decades as the migrant Ag labor issue became entangled in the broader, politically charged debate over illegal immigration.
Story courtesy of NAFB News Service and Matt Kaye/Berns Bureau Washington
