Washington — The Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA), The Fertilizer Institute (TFI), and other members of the Waters Advocacy Coalition (WAC) submitted a 10-page letter on Sept. 29 to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh urging EPA to withdraw its proposed rule to define waters of the U.S. under the Clean Water Act. The 63 WAC organizations criticized EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a number of legal and procedural issues, and said the rule has drawn criticism from state water and agriculture departments, business groups, governmental organizations, and numerous trade and professional groups including the National Governors’ Association, Western Governors’ Association, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, and the American Farm Bureau. “EPA hasn’t finalized the Connectivity Report, its scientific basis for the regulation, or made it available for public scrutiny,” said ARA President and CEO Daren Coppock. “Their Science Advisory Board hasn’t completed its review of that report. The agency can’t give a consistent answer from one day to the next about how much jurisdiction will expand under the rule; one day it’s a 2.7 percent expansion, and the next the Administrator is saying that 60 percent of America’s waters will be unprotected without it. And now we’re seeing a regulatory agency resort to tweeting, posting, blogging, and videos to advocate its proposal. Those are the actions of an advocacy organization, not a science-based regulatory agency.” ARA noted as well that the U.S. House recently passed a bill (H.R. 5078) that would prevent implementation of the rule and require the agencies to work with state and local governments in the development of future rulemaking. H.R. 5078 has not yet been considered in the Senate, and the rule’s comment period ends Oct. 21, 2014.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain