WASHINGTON—The nation’s largest farm organization has asked the courts to rule on whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to issue land use regulations under the Clean Water Act. American Farm Bureau Federation and several other plaintiffs say that the EPA doesn’t.

“The Clean Water Act specifically reserves to the states the power to decide how to achieve water quality standards. It doesn’t authorize EPA to tell the states how to achieve water quality standards,” said Ellen Steen, chief legal counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “This is an EPA power grab, and what it is requiring of the states is going to impose billions—not millions, but billions—of dollars in cost on the state and local governments throughout this six-state area.”

AFBF and other plaintiffs filed for summary judgment Jan. 27 in a lawsuit against the EPA over the agency’s total maximum daily load for the Chesapeake Bay watershed. AFBF and Pennsylvania Farm Bureau filed the suit in January 2011.

Steen said the decision to file for summary judgment stems from the EPA’s push to set a pollution diet for the Chesapeake Bay that affects six states and the District of Columbia.

“The reason that American Farm Bureau has filed this suit is that it has implications that go way beyond the Chesapeake Bay area,” she said. “We all want a clean Chesapeake Bay. We live in this area, and our members throughout the Chesapeake Bay area are working hard to achieve clean water in the bay, but the precedent that EPA’s action here would set is that EPA has the power to go in anytime, anywhere that water bodies are not meeting their standards, and tell the states how to regulate, regardless of cost—tell the states what they need to do, how aggressive they need to be and when they have to achieve those standards, regardless of cost.

“The cost here is going to be tremendous, and the same could happen anywhere across the country if EPA were allowed to do this kind of thing.”

Additionally, Steen said, the EPA has given no reason for anyone to think its TMDL will work.

“EPA didn’t really ever conclude in putting together this plan that it would, in fact, achieve standards in the bay, but they’re pushing ahead full bore and imposing all these costs regardless.”

Contact Tracy Taylor Grondine, 202-406-3642, or Mace Thornton, 202-406-3641, AFBF public relations.