March 8, 2017
www.gfb.org
Vol. 35 No. 5
EXECUTIVE ORDER DIRECTS EPA, CORPS TO REVIEW WOTUS RULE In an executive order issued Feb. 28, President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil works to review and rescind or revise the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) finalized in 2015. The EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pushed the WOTUS rule through the rulemaking process and by doing so expanded the federal government’s regulatory reach. Agricultural groups including Farm Bureau opposed it, contending that the rule went beyond Congress’ intent under the Clean Water Act. “We thought from the start that the Waters of the U.S. rule was too broad and granted the federal government too much authority over what happens on private property,” said Georgia Farm Bureau President Gerald Long. Trump also directed the EPA and Corps of Engineers to review actions to implement the rule and rescind or revise those actions. The two agencies were also directed to notify U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions of their review to allow his office to take measures relating to pending litigation related to the rule. Georgia and more than two dozen other states sued to stop the rule and the courts have halted The next issue of GFB News Alert its implementation pending the outcome of those cases. comes out The executive order recommended that the agencies consider defining the March 22. term “navigable waters” in a manner consistent with the opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2006 case Rapanos v. United States. In that opinion, Scalia said the phrase “waters of the United States” includes “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water ‘forming geographic features’ that are described in ordinary parlance as “streams[,] … oceans, rivers, [and] lakes.” The phrase does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.” American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall praised the president for the executive order. “Farmers and ranchers have been calling for a common-sense approach to regulatory reform, and today the Trump administration responded to that call,” Duvall said. “EPA has too long been characterized by regulatory overreach that disregards the positive conservation efforts of farmers and threatens their very way of life. [This] action is as much a beginning as an end, and there is much work to do to ensure that any revised rule is transparent and fair for America’s farmers and ranchers.”