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Missouri joins states pushing for new WOTUS rule

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined a 17-state coalition this week urging the Trump administration to adopt its proposed replacement of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.

“What we’re really doing is advocating for some balance here,” Schmitt told Brownfield Ag News Thursday, “to rescind essentially the Waters of the U.S. rule that had a really devastating impact on Missouri farmers, and farmers and ranchers across the country.”

Farmers shouldn’t be subjected to the kind of overreach imposed by the original WOTUS rule, Schmitt tells Brownfield, referring to the Obama era rule as “a federal land grab”.

“It was an example of an administrative agency issuing a rule that had the force and effect of law that is really beyond what any legislature or certainly any constitutional provision ever intended,” said Schmitt.

Comments filed late Monday by the 17 states ask EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to repeal the original WOTUS rule. The states say the new rule corrects flaws in the original rule that dangerously overextend authority of the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Missouri signed the West Virginia-led letter with attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.