WOTUS Legislation Passes U.S. House

The House passed H.R. 1732 Regulatory Integrity Protection Act by a vote of 261 to 155 on Wednesday; to withdraw the proposed “waters of the United States” rule. That is good news for the natural resource industries. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Legislative Affairs Colin Woodall says
Woodall: “This is a great first step. We are very happy with the House of Representatives voted to pass the WOTUS legislation in order to send that back to EPA and tell them to start over. One of the biggest concerns we’ve had with the entire process is that EPA never came to all the stakeholders and engaged us. They never had the conversations with us about true water quality issues. I think if they start over with a mandate from Congress to engage all of us, then we can have a true discussion about water quality issues. Make sure we are addressing those without putting undue restrictions on landowners. When it comes down to what we were currently seeing — it was one of the biggest land grab that EPA has ever seen. Even though we are not out of the woods yet, the Senate still has to pass this, the house passing this was a good first step.
State, regional and national ag groups are now urging the U.S. Senate to follow the House’s lead and also pass legislation requiring EAP and The Army Corps of Engineers to rewrite their Waters of the U.S. rule.