Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says it’s time to end the WOTUS back and forth between the courts and the EPA and pass a legislative ‘fix’.
Grassley says, “These EPA bureaucrats will never give up on this issue of trying to regulate and regulate every square inch of land in the United States.”
Even after Senator Grassley said the Supreme Court rejected the EPA’s ‘significant nexus test’ for a navigable water to define a wetland in favor of an observable surface connection. Grassley says the new rule still lacks certainty and needs a permanent ‘fix’.
He says, “Because landowners deserve certainty, clarity, and common sense, my colleagues and I introduced a bill that we called, “Define WOTUS Act.”
The American Farm Bureau says the EPA’s final rule is still vague in defining ditches and other farm features that fill with water only sometimes–a vestige of the 2006 Rapos ruling not fixed in the May decision. Grassley says, “This week’s action by EPA is further proof of the absolute need to pass legislation. Otherwise, landowners could one day wake up to steep fines for simply moving dirt on their own land, for simply moving dirt without Uncle Sam’s permission.”
Grassley adds the EPA also failed in its final rulemaking to follow the Administrative Procedures Act with 90 days or more for public comment. But the Farm Bureau says the agency used a “good cause exemption” to get around that.