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EPA on permits/jurisdiction in water rule

If farmers didn’t need a water permit before they won’t need one with the new rule of the Clean Water Act — That’s what EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told members of the Kansas City AgriBusiness Council on Thursday, the day after she told that to reporters on a Missouri farm tour.

“Unless you’re really doing something that’s disturbing this in a significant way or adding pollutants downstream you never need to connect with EPA about it. It’s not as if we’re requiring a permit with a new rule that we didn’t have before,” McCarthy said on the farm tour.

Ken Kopocis, EPA’s Senior Advisor in the Office of Water, pointed to upland ditches on that farm that he says will NOT be regulated. He says just because a ditch connects to jurisdictional waters, like the ones on the farm, does not make the ditch itself jurisdictional…

“In fact,” said Kopocis on the tour, “This is the first time that we’re proposing in rule language itself to put language in that says that these upland ditches that are providing the drainage function they were built for are explicitly excluded from the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.”

EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks, based in Kansas City, who was also on the tour said the EPA won’t be knocking at the farm gate…

“All kinds of decisions will need to be made and nobody will ever have to come and talk to the EPA and the Corps of Engineers because they’ll have that suite of practices, they’ll have that clarity that they didn’t have right now. That’s the point of the rule is to give that clarity so guys can make decisions in real time,” said Brooks on the farm tour.

Standard farming practices, whether through USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) programs or not, McCarthy stressed, will be exempt from the rule. She says that’s what her tours of farms and discussions with farmers is all about – “to get it right.”

Audio with Bill Heffernan and Gina McCarthy on farm tour (3:00 mp3)

AUDIO: Bill Heffernan, Karl Brooks, Ken Kopocis (6:30 mp3)

Gina McCarthy’s speech to the Kansas City AgriBusiness Council