On Monday, Aug. 20, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) submitted a motion to stay the recent decision that revived the 2015 Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule in 26 states.
On Aug. 16, a federal district court judge in South Carolina ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)’s delay of WOTUS violated the Administrative Procedures Act. In its motion to stay the decision, AFBF argues that the effective re-implementation of WOTUS harms the public interest.
Noting that the Aug. 16 ruling divides the country with vastly different enforcement requirements regarding water, the AFBF pointing out, “The complications of such a patchwork regime are severe. As just one example, what are the agencies to do when a multi-state project implicates earth-moving activities in small, isolated features characterized as wetlands across portions of Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee? That single project will now be subject to two fundamentally different regulatory regimes—with only the portion in Illinois likely to demand federal permitting (at great expense and even greater delay) for activity in those isolated features. The problem would be multiplied many times over throughout the country in similar cases.”
