EDITORIAL: EPA’s new clean water standard a threat to American farms

OPINION:

Barnyard critters beware, the water cops are coming. The Environmental Protection Agency, which claims jurisdiction over the air above, wants to rule not just the waves but the wet spots as well, claiming jurisdiction over water that rushes or merely trickles over the farmland of America.

The agency’s Clean Water Rule is regulation run amok, and this latest big-government overreach doesn’t wash.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, backed by the Army Corps of Engineers, announced last week that the agency has completed its conquest of 413,031 square miles of water across the nation, and a little more than that after a hard rain. “We’re finalizing a clean water rule to protect the streams and the wetlands that one in three Americans rely on for drinking water,” she says. “And we’re doing that without creating any new permitting requirements and maintaining all previous exemptions and exclusions.”

The EPA’s new rule seizing oversight of local and state waterways — and bodies of water on private land — has rightly riled businesses and farmers from coast to coast. The impact of the rule rests on the meaning of “the waters of the United States.” The new rule gives the agency wide latitude to use “case-specific” discretion in judging whether water has a “significant nexus” with tributaries already covered by EPA water quality standards. By that standard, a farm pond that is little more than a muddy pool during dry summer months and overflows with snow melt and runs into a creek during the spring thaw could now be a target for an EPA bureaucrat with a shiny new badge eager to make a water-pollution expedition. Wet spots today, kitchen sinks and bathtubs tomorrow.

Farm organizations, including the powerful American Farm Bureau Federation, have cried foul and are counting on Republicans in Congress to push back against the overreach before it takes effect later this summer. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio warns of the economic impact of federal micromanagement of rural life in both red and blue states. “The administration’s decree to unilaterally expand federal authority is a raw and tyrannical power grab that will crush jobs,” says Mr. Boehner. Congress must act quickly before Mr. Boehner’s enthusiasm wanes.

The House voted in May to overturn the new restrictions, prompting President Obama to threaten a veto. In the Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee is drawing up a Federal Water Quality Protection Act that would force the EPA to withdraw the Clean Water Rule and rewrite it to limit how far upstream the agency can reach in controlling what flows downstream.

Clean water is essential for good health — water that is perfectly clear to the eye, has no nasty aftertaste and most important, contains no water-borne diseases. More than 750 million people around the world lack access to clean water and an estimated 840,000 die each year from inadequate drinking water and sanitation. Nearly all of them live outside of the United States. Nearly all Americans enjoy good water.

Citing a dairy farmer for discharging 11,000 gallons of manure into a river, as the agency did in North Carolina last month, is reasonable, but when stormwater runoff carries away barnyard souvenirs in an unexpected deluge, the EPA must restrain its instinct to attempt to bully everyone. If the Clean Water Rule takes effect as written, there won’t be enough space on its most-wanted list of enviro-criminals to list the fugitives from the farms. There aren’t enough water cops to patrol every ditch and swale across the fruited plain.