Arizona farmer: EPA’s new water rule creates unnecessary uncertainty for Arizona farmers and ranchers
By Stefanie Smallhouse, Arizona Farm Bureau President
Published by the Arizona Daily Star
As Arizonans, we all are keenly aware of the importance of water. But perhaps no one values water more than the family farmers and ranchers growing food and fiber in the arid Arizona climate.
My family’s drinking water and our livelihood would be at risk without clean water, which is crucial for growing healthy crops. My son and daughter are the sixth generation to farm on our family’s ranch, so for me, it’s even more imperative that our water is safeguarded for the future. That’s why we constantly implement best practices to better steward our water resources and are steadfast advocates of policies that conserve our water for generations to come.
Arizona growers have always respected and willingly complied with the intent and goals of the Clean Water Act, which was passed by Congress in the 1970s to establish key protections for our nation’s waters, including navigable lakes and rivers, tributaries and wetlands.
Of critical importance in the law is the role it provides state governments in creating and enforcing additional water protections, as states have greater insight into their own water resources than the federal government. Arizona is an excellent example, as we have shored up our state’s water rule to grant further protections for tributaries and enacted a process for garnering local input to add or remove protected waters.
Despite all the good the Clean Water Act has done for our nation’s waters, we continue to see the EPA use this law as a means to broaden the federal government’s power over private property far beyond the original intent of Congress.
The EPA’s latest effort is a new rule that changes the definition of waters of the United States, or the waters that are federally regulated under the Clean Water Act. The new regulation asserts federal power over not only lakes and rivers but also ditches, farm ponds, and even low spots in fields. The most troubling part of this rule is its inclusion of dry waterways that only flow during heavy precipitation, also known as ephemeral washes.
My family’s farm and ranch, located in the San Pedro River valley, is completely crisscrossed with washes that rarely have any flow at all unless we receive well above average precipitation. Yet because rain runoff is considered ephemeral waters, much of our land would be regulated by the EPA’s new WOTUS rule. This would force us to endure the arduous and lengthy process of obtaining a Clean Water Act permit just to perform everyday farm tasks like building fence, plowing ground, or changing a field from one crop to another.
Of course, we aren’t the only producers in the state who will be impacted. Our arid climate means thousands of acres of dry land could be subject to federal regulation simply because it may be wet a few days of the year.
As president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, I have heard from dozens of our members who are deeply concerned about the threat this new rule poses for their operation. The rule is so vague and confusing it’s nearly impossible for agriculture producers to decipher if their land is under EPA’s jurisdiction. And the consequences for being wrong are dire. Family farms like mine will be forced to hire an array of expensive lawyers and consultants just to determine if our land contains federally regulated “waters,” or else face exorbitant civil fines and even criminal charges.
We are thankful that a bipartisan majority of Arizona’s congressional delegation recognized the harmful impact of this rule and did the right thing for Arizona farmers and ranchers by voting in favor of a recent Congressional resolution to repeal the WOTUS rule. While the rule has been blocked by the courts in 26 states, the President still vetoed the will of Congress, returning the burden back on lawmakers. We urge them to keep fighting with policies or appropriations to ensure Arizona’s farmers and ranchers can continue to invest in water conservation measures rather than regulatory consultants and attorneys.