The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association responded to the newly-Published Waters of the U.S. Rule.
The group says farmers and ranchers have dealt with the whiplash of shifting WOTUS definitions for far too long.
“While the new rule retains longstanding exclusions for certain agricultural features, it still creates new uncertainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners,” says NCBA Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart.
NCBA previously asked the Environmental Protection Agency to retain agricultural exclusions for small, isolated, and temporary water features that commonly appear on farms and ranches.
The new rule fails to clearly exempt isolated and ephemeral features from federal jurisdiction and relies on “case-by-case” determinations to assess whether a feature is federally regulated.
Hart says the timing of the rule couldn’t be worse as the Supreme Court is currently considering Sackett v. EPA, which would provide much-needed clarity to the WOTUS definition. “Today’s rule seeks to directly preempt the Supreme Court,” she says.