WOTUS Still Afloat

WOTUS Still Afloat

WOTUS Still Afloat. I’m Greg Martin with Colorado Ag Today.

I know it’s kind of strange to be discussing the EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule when Colorado is looking at more severe water shortages this year but it’s a subject that just won’t seem to go away. The public comment period was over back in November but EPA received well over a million comments. Farm Bureau’s regulator specialist, Don Parrish says that only about 20-thousand were useful.

PARRISH: Technically that’s only about two percent of that 1 million. But of those people who actually read the proposal, EPA’s own contractors said 68 percent of them opposed the regulation. That’s unprecedented. That is pretty amazing because when people bothered to look at the details of the proposal, they overwhelmingly opposed it.

He says that it’s really important that farmers, ranchers and the general public hold EPA accountable

PARRISH: They’re doing everything they can to expand their jurisdictional reach, and they’re doing it by skewing the way in which comments come in on this proposal. EPA has to look at all the comments. Believe me, I understand that. But the ones that really make a difference are the ones where people sat down, tried to look at what was in this proposal and tried to offer important criticisms and concerns about what the agency had proposed.

And that’s Colorado Ag Today. I’m Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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