Farm Bureau Files Brief Supporting Water Rule Opponents

The American Farm Bureau Federation, together with a broad coalition of other farm and business groups, has filed a brief in support of 13 states—including Montana— challenging the EPA’s 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule before a federal district court in North Dakota. “We don’t mind rules as long as we know what they are and they don’t keep changing the target,” noted MFBF President Hans McPherson. “WOTUS rules are too vague and broad, which is very unfair because government bureaucrats can interpret it as they please.”McPherson said he appreciates the action of Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, who understood the disastrous implications for the state if every puddle and ephemeral stream in Montana was regulated under WOTUS.The brief explains how EPA repeatedly broke the law in writing a rule that would vastly expand its Clean Water Act regulatory authority to cover small and isolated land and water features. According to the brief, the 2015 rule “reads the term navigable out of the [Clean Water Act] and asserts jurisdiction over remote and isolated features that bear no meaningful relationship to ‘navigable waters.’”  The coalition also argues that the rule is unconstitutionally vague because it “gives malleable discretion to bureaucrats to determine which land features are jurisdictional ‘waters’ and which are not.”