Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is continuing his conversation with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart about EPA’s intent to revise the Waters of the U.S. rule and conform it to align with the intent of the Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision. To see the first part of their conversation, click here.
“If you have owned or managed land since 1972, the year the Clean Water Act was passed into law, you have now dealt with fourteen regulatory iterations of a WOTUS definition,” Hart pointed out. “That is no way to manage a business. That is not a tool that anyone can use to effectively plan future land management decisions.”
She emphasized the necessity of a clear regulatory standard when land management sustainability decisions are being planned. She revealed that the 2006 Rapanos v. United States decision sent the EPA on a mission to create a regulatory definition for WOTUS.
“We started with the Obama rule in 2015. It was obviously a significant federal overreach. We saw a lot of dryland being regulated as WOTUS or potentially regulated as WOTUS. That rule was pulled back by the Trump administration during his first term and replaced with the Navigable Waters Protection Rule. That rule was pulled back by the Biden administration and I would say the Biden WOTUS definition tried to find some middle ground between the Obama and Trump rules, but in the end, didn’t provide the regulatory clarity that landowners need.”
In the middle of the Biden administration in 2023, the Sackett v. EPA Supreme Court decision turned all of the previous WOTUS standards upside down. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is now beginning the process of defining and hopefully clarifying the new standards and terms of that decision.
“I hope that it doesn’t take us another fifty years to get some finality on a WOTUS definition, but we will work really hard to ensure that in the next four years, we can find a definition that works for everyone including landowners and can hold up in court,” Hart stated.
NCBA and its membership have long been heavily engaged in the WOTUS definition process by filing comments, participating in agency rulemakings, and hosted EPA staff at various ranches to discuss different water features.
“One of the most valuable things that producers get from an NCBA membership is not only representation on Capitol Hill, not only representation at the agency but when it is time, NCBA will litigate. And litigate WOTUS, we did! We have sued EPA, defended EPA when it came to the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, and then in other WOTUS-related cases that make their way up to the Supreme Court, we file amicus briefs.”
She detailed how NCBA filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court and its arguments were used in the final decision. “It was certainly a career highlight, but also a testament to the value of the arguments presented by cattle producers across the nation for why we need a clear WOTUS definition,” she finished.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
