AGUPDATE: Opinion: Revised WOTUS rule a win for landowners, ag community and states’ rights
Between the weather, market prices and crop production, farmers and ranchers are already faced with significant uncertainty as they seek to make a profit while feeding and fueling the world.
The last thing they need is more uncertainty and overregulation from the federal government. Fortunately, over the past two years, we’ve made significant progress undoing many of the damaging regulations from the previous administration and enacting smarter policies to help our producers flourish and thrive. A recent example is the revised Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule, which the Trump administration announced earlier this week.
WOTUS is a rule that seeks to define the bodies of water that will be regulated under the Clean Water Act of 1972. Originally drafted by the Obama administration, the original WOTUS rule replaced a standard definition of a body of water with a vague definition in which a bureaucrat would make a decision on whether water could be regulated on a case-by-case basis. This vagueness and uncertainty was deeply troubling to many of us who recognized it as a massive power grab by the federal government seeking to expand its power over private property.
The revised WOTUS rule gives farmers, ranchers and landowners the certainty they need to know exactly when the Clean Water Act applies to them and when it does not. It adapts the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the term navigable water – essentially oceans, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds and adjacent wetlands – and clarifies that not all water is ‘waters of the U.S.’ Landowners are already good stewards of our land. We don’t need unelected bureaucrats in Washington making ambiguous decisions about land they are not familiar with.
