Reversing President Biden’s Government Overreach

Dear Friend,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to you about the Biden Administration’s disastrous new rule to redefine waters of the United States (WOTUS) and explained why this extreme overreach would be a disaster for farmers, ranchers, and families all over the country. This week, I filed legislation to overturn the Biden EPA’s new WOTUS rule.

Many of my fellow Republicans from all over the country joined me. Some of them come from districts like North Missouri—where agriculture and family farms are a huge part of our way of life. Others don’t. They come from all over, from New York to California. And, all the way from Puerto Rico to Guam and American Samoa. That’s because this WOTUS overreach doesn’t just hurt farmers—it’s bad for every American.

Take, for example, the gentleman in Platte County whose property I visited back when this all started in 2014. He was trying to build his dream home and wanted to build a pond on the property. He jumped through all the hoops and did all the right things, but right before he was ready to start construction, he was told someone needed to come out and make sure his pond project didn’t impact any waters of the United States. And that’s where it all unraveled.

The Corps of Engineers sent someone out and sure enough, they decided those ditches on his property were in fact waters of the United States. He could go through with the project, but he’d have to get a permit—and pay a “mitigation fee” to offset the environmental impacts of the projects. That fee, the Corps figured, would only be about $165,000. Yes, you read that right, they wanted a $165,000 fee just so he could build a $40,000 pond.

Needless to say, that pond never got built. It’s this kind of nonsense that makes going back to the old WOTUS rule’s “significant nexus” standard so frustrating. The future of your property or project depends on what side of the bed a bureaucrat woke up on that morning. That wasn’t what the Clean Water Act and the Waters of the United States rule was intended to be.

Congress passed the Clean Water Act to keep factories from dumping chemicals into rivers—not to stop homeowners from building ponds in their back yards or stop farmers from building ponds in pastures. But, that’s exactly what the Biden Administration wants to do.

They want to misuse the law to force everyday Americans to shell out massive sums of money to the government just to do what they want on their own land. It’s nonsense. That’s why I’m working to put a stop to it.

Sincerely,

Sam Graves