Farmers are up in arms around the country over a proposal by the EPA to extend the federal government’s control over water.
Since 1972, the federal government has had control over “navigable waters” in the nation. That was later expanded to include wetlands near such rivers.
It’s another crazy plan by the federal government to extend its reach even further into our economy and daily lives. Bureaucratic regulations are now swamping many industries, especially those that produce energy and power needed to fuel our economy.
The move to extend the power of the federal government into farm ditches is another example of this overreach. But the nation’s agricultural interests would have a better argument against the proposed rule if it weren’t already so tied at the hip with the feds. Through a slew of federal programs, the nation’s largest corporate agriculture companies are getting billions of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies. The American Midwest is awash in federal money going to large farm interests.
They may have one hand out trying to block this new water rule, but at the same time they have the other hand out asking for cash. Not a pretty picture for the American taxpayer no matter how you slice it.
Read more at Barrow Journal
3 comments:
There was a water agency here in the foothills of northern California, that was not allowed to repair some of their leaky pipes, because of the federally protected 'wetlands' that the leaks had produced.
A couple of months ago I read about a farmer who had a pond on his property that the EPA was threatening to make him pay a penalty of many tens of thousands of dollars. It is long past time that the Congress not only rewrites the Clean Air and Water Act but makes it impossible for the EPA to promulgate future regulations due to its past record of abuse.
We are at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats who have almost unlimited power without being held to account to those the people. Congress has created a monster in the administrative state and unless it is brought under control quickly government of the people, by the people, for the people will no longer be true. The day before the 4th of July the Obama administration released 1,300 pages of new Obamacare regulations, adding to the more than 10,000 pages already written. Bureaucrats are churning out thousand of new pages of regs every year on laws that had passed congress years and in some cases decades ago. Often without thought at what the consequences will be to the economy or to our freedoms. As if they care.
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