Posted on 08/03/2014 7:51:52 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The 1972 Clean Water Act requires anyone putting anything into a navigable or interstate watercourse or wetland to get a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. Tributaries to such watercourses are covered, but the word “tributary” was not defined. Now, for the first time, in pending regulations, the EPA proposes to do so.
A ditch can be a tributary. They are mentioned explicitly in the rule. They are excluded only if they “do not contribute flow, either directly or through another water, to” a watercourse already reached by the EPA’s jurisdiction. They don’t have to carry water continuously. “Intermittently” or “ephemerally” is sufficient.
What the EPA and Army Corps miss, however, is that by asserting jurisdiction first, and later filling in the substantive details of the regulation, the agencies are subjecting landowners of all kinds, but especially farmers, to the slow death of requiring prior approval. There is no law mandating that a regulatory agency move expeditiously. If, in normal agricultural operations, a farmer moves topsoil into a ditch that occasionally carries water, prior approval would be needed. Farms can’t operate under a regime of asking permission for actions as mundane as that.
Why not start with the big problems? The EPA is not going to have sufficient resources to investigate every farm ditch anyway, so why threaten it?
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
That's an easy one: anarcho-tyranny.
!
I heard a lengthy interview with some mucky-muck from the EPA about this. She lied to the point of having to be a blood relative of Bill Clinton.
If they’re lying about it that much, it’s an even bigger disaster than anyone now guesses.
When we the people get back the Congress, the Legislative Branch of this government I would hope we press them to alter the purpose of the EPA, or eliminate it entirely.
The alteration would be to an advisory entity opposed to a regulatory entity, and let Congress do the job of rule making under the watchful eye of the people opposed to the political party.
Isn’t that what they said about the DHS enforcing EOs against Land Rover Defenders? Now we have single vehicles seized from hapless owners with no evidence their vehicles are even in violation.
Bingo. FedGov loves power.
Hopefully this isn’t the same Tom Campbell who was (maybe is) the BIGGEST JERK to ever be involved in California Republican politics. If it is, he has NO LEGITIMACY complaining about the EPA, considering his record.
The author who wrote this article was a former U.S. congressman from CA who earned a law degree from Harvard
and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
He was also a law clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
ping!
Crap, that’s him. I guess he’s trying to imitate a conservative, in his latest incarnation.
i don’t care how smart he is water runs down hill ditch or no ditch.
Why don’t our “Republicans” defund this “regulation?”
The DemonRats are constantly at”War”with”The Language”!They are ALWAYS”Re-Defining”words so that they become Unrecognizable.When will they publish “The New DemonRat EPA-Approved,Enviro-Wacko,Frequently ABRIDGED Dictionary”????
In many parts of the farm belt farmers have for generations used drainage tiles to remove standing water from low areas of their fields with the water being drained into a ditch. Under these regulations individual farmers would have to seek permits presumably every time it rains. Environmental zealots in the EPA are determined to raise both our electric rates and our food costs.
I could care less if he’s a conservative or a flaming pink homo commie, anyone who is against the EPA deserves support.
“I could care less if he’s a conservative or a flaming pink homo commie, anyone who is against the EPA deserves support.”
Maybe now (must be planning to run in a conservative district), but 20 years ago, he was basically to the left of Barbara Boxer. Those people SICKEN me.
Thanks for the ping. This will be one to keep an eye on.
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