The American Farm Bureau, as lead for a multi-industry coalition, accused the Biden EPA and Army Corps of secretly violating the Supreme Court’s Waters of the U.S. ruling in Sackett vs. the EPA.
AFB’s Courtney Briggs chairs the Waters Advocacy Coalition of 45 industry trade associations and told a House panel that the EPA and Army Corps are end-running the Supreme Court with memos to regional and district offices. Briggs says, “Many of the concepts outlined in these memos run counter to the decision in Sackett. The agencies offer no mechanism for appealing the memos and no opportunity for public comment. These memos are effectively rulemakings hiding in plain sight.”
Lacking, Briggs says, “clarity and certainty” for landowners, stretching the government’s reach “beyond what is legal”. She says, “Despite a clear ruling in Sackett, there have been no clear directions from the agencies about which water features are regulated by the federal government, and which are left to the states. Instead, the agencies are making up the rules as they go.”
And they’re failing to clarify the meaning of “relatively permanent and continuous surface connection,” which are crucial terms used in Sackett to define federal jurisdiction. She says, “It seems the agencies want to leave these terms undefined, allowing them to exploit the gray areas that exist in a post-Sackett world.”
And they’re gaining “unchecked power” to regulate land and resources and threaten farmers, builders, and others. Briggs adds, “Either 64 thousand dollars per day for every day of non-compliance or jail time.”
Briggs says her group also learned of “secret implementation guidance” to Army Corps district offices, but a Freedom of Information request produced mostly redacted documents labeled “deliberative,” defying the logic of their intended use, which is to regulate.
Story by Matt Kaye/Berns Bureau; courtesy of NAFB News Service
