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Bacon: Congress could tailor WOTUS rule to help provide additional clarity

Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon tells Brownfield Congress has an opportunity to provide additional clarity to the industry after Thursday’s ruling from the US Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA

“We need to be more specific in our rules. When you have any kind of ambiguity, a new administration comes in and tries to interpret it in a way that suits their ideology.”

For example, the House Ag Committee member says, “When we say what protect rivers and lakes maybe we should just say clearly not meaning when there’s puddles and low lying fields that periodically get too much water on.”

Bacon says the original intention of the Clean Water Act was to protect rivers and lakes, not to protect ditches and puddles and low-lying fields. “Our farmers want continuity. They don’t want unpredictability and this going back and forth with with very vague rules is hard on the farmers.”

On Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed and remanded the decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sackett v. EPA, but was split, 5-4, on the proper test to determine what qualifies as jurisdictional.