Courts Chesapeake Bay Decision Threat To Farmers Nationwide
A federal district court’s recent decision upholding EPA’s total maximum daily load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay wrongly puts federal agency staff in charge of intensely local land use decisions, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). AFBF and other groups challenged the TMDL as an unlawful overreach of EPA’s power under the Clean Water Act and as based on faulty science and inadequate opportunity for public comment.
“We believe the ruling is incorrect and has huge implications for farmers and many others in the Chesapeake Bay area and nationwide,” said AFBF President Bob Stallman. Those implications include EPA power to tell a farmer he can’t work the land anymore.
The Bay TMDL imposed caps on nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment reaching the Chesapeake Bay. AFBF argued, however, that EPA’s TMDL didn’t just set a “total” load, it went much further and told states how to divide or “allocate” that load among farms, towns, homeowners, and businesses throughout the entire watershed flowing to the Bay and all of its tributaries. AFBF argued those “allocations” exceed the power Congress granted to EPA.
“This plan directly encroaches on state authority over land and water quality planning-not only in states bordering the bay, but in states hundreds of miles away,” the brief charged.
“With the authority EPA has asserted in the Bay TMDL, there’s nothing to stop EPA from going farm-to-farm across the countryside, setting ‘allocations’ that restrict or even prevent farming,” said Ellen Steen, AFBF general counsel.
“Congress required that state and local authorities — not EPA — would have authority over local land use and farming in particular. People at the local and state levels understand the local issues and the local economies,” said Steen. “They take to heart — far more than an EPA bureaucrat would — the impact these decisions will have on local economies and rural communities.”
In regard to the ruling, Stallman emphasized that the lawsuit is not about how farmers and ranchers care for the land and water, but about the limited authority Congress gave EPA to regulate local land use decisions.
“Win or lose in this lawsuit, farmers care deeply about our natural environment and want to do our part to improve water quality. But Congress did not authorize EPA to dictate how farmers, builders, homeowners, and towns would share the responsibility of achieving clean water,” Stallman said.