North Dakota leadership has come out strongly against the EPA’s proposed Waters of the U.S. regulations. On Saturday, Senator Hoeven spoke to the North Dakota Farm Bureau on his work to marginalize the regulations including the following specifics:
- Defund the the implementation of the regulation through legislation.
- Prevent the implementation of the regulation in the first place.
The Waters of the U.S. is a proposed rule intended to clarify the Clean Water Act. Enforcement of the Clean Water Act has become more difficult following U.S. Supreme Court cases in 2001 and 2006 (SWANCC vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Rapanos vs. United States).
The proposed rule changes seek to clarify specifically which waters fall under the jurisdiction of the EPA and the Clean Water Act. The problem is once waters become protected, North Dakota land owners become subject to another layer of costly government bureaucracy. Generally speaking, North Dakota leadership feels these new definitions of which waters apply to the Clean Water Act go to far and serve as an overreach of power by the E.P.A..
