For
the past 41 years, I’ve toured our state to hear from Iowa workers, community
leaders and farmers at my annual 99 county meetings.
As
a farmer myself, I enjoy speaking with those involved in agriculture across the
state who tell me they are third, fourth and fifth-generation farmers. These
folks use the same soil and barns as their grandfathers before them.
Everyone
I speak with intends to leave their land to their children better than they
found it when it was entrusted to their care.
Between
the use of cover crops, buffer strips and no-till farming, more conservation
practices than ever before are being used on Iowa’s 35 million acres of
farmland.
And
while Iowa farmers are continuing to feed our country and the world, they are
doing so with fewer inputs, and better soil and water outcomes.
Iowa
farmers should be congratulated. But it seems like there is always a target on
their back.
Last
week, it was reported that the Biden administration is moving forward to add
red tape to their operations by rewriting the Trump Navigable Waters Protection
Rule.
In
my first telephone conversation with then EPA Nominee Administrator Regan, I
warned him against moving back to the Obama-era Waters of the United States
(WOTUS) regulation because of the burden that it placed on rural areas
including Iowa farmland.
In
fact, under the old WOTUS rule, 97 percent of Iowa’s land would have been
subject to jurisdiction under the Clean
Water Act.
Adding
more federal red tape to a farmer’s day-to-day decisions on the farm is
government overreach, plain and simple.
But
besides Iowa’s 86,000 farmers, a change in the Trump Navigable Water Protection
Rule will also result in significant red tape and expense for home builders,
golf course managers and construction companies as they make routine decisions
about how best to use their land and run their businesses.
Imagine
that, not only have new home prices risen due to inflation and soaring lumber
prices, now home prices will continue to increase due to additional permitting
that wasn’t previously needed.
To
clear up common confusion, the Trump-era rule did not give polluter’s free rein
to discharge pollution with no regard for the health of our nation’s waterways.
Regulating
the discharge of pollution into waterways is important and is done through
other parts of the Clean Water Act.
The
Trump rule made sure that where routine land-use decisions were being made,
with little or no environmental impact, then those decisions would not be
regulated by the federal government.
EPA’s
release about its intention to overturn the Navigable Water Protection Rule mentions
that 333 projects would have required permits by the Obama WOTUS rule that did
not need government paperwork under the Navigable Water Protection Rule.
This
is exactly the point.
If
you are simply moving dirt to level off a low point in a field, should that
need a federal permit?
If
a golf course is fixing a bunker or flattening a green, should that need a
federal permit?
The
obvious commonsense answer to both is no. What good does this red tap do
anyone?
I
want to underline the point. My Republican colleagues and I want clean water
and healthy soil.
For
our families and communities, this is important.
But
what I don’t want is a federal government power grab that adds so much red tape
to routine land use decisions that it slows our economy to a halt.
If
the Biden administration decides to go down this road of reverting to the
Obama-era WOTUS, they will be seriously misguided.
For
an Administration that is so focused on updating our nation’s infrastructure,
why does it make sense to propose rule that only adds costs and delays
construction with no identifiable benefit?
I
urge President Biden and EPA Administrator Regan to listen to the farmers and
landowners across the country.
