EPA's Final Ruling Adds More Uncertainty for Producers

EPA's Final Ruling Adds More Uncertainty for Producers

EPA’s new WOTUS final ruling came out in late December.

Ethan Lane, Vice President of Government Affairs with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, says the industry got mostly what was expected from EPA but Lane adds, some parts of the ruling just adds more uncertainty for producers.

“It’s not a rule that agriculture is particularly happy with. Those are concerns we’ve always repeated to the administration. In the draft rule, they stripped out all of those exemptions for agriculture… the final rule did see a lot of those restored, which is some progress in the right direction. Although they kind of opened up a new can of worms by establishing what they’re calling a case-by-case framework for evaluating… questionable water areas. And I would put most of our producers operations into that questionable bucket, which means rather than providing more operational certainty, this rule in its current form is going to add to the uncertainty that producers face.”

With the Sackett v. EPA case currently before the Supreme Court could complicate the EPA’s implementation of the new ruling. Join us next time to hear more about how the Supreme Court could alter this rule making.

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