Farmers Fight Back

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Front Page Magazine:

On Sunday, American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) President Bob Stallman announced that his group would be filing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday in U.S. District Court in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The head of the six million member organization told his members that the EPA’s “over-regulation endangers our industry.” “Our message to the new Congress is clear: It is time to stop the EPA,” said Stallman. “But we don’t intend to leave this to Congress alone. We are prepared to carry this battle to the courts.”
What Stallman is attempting to block is the Chesapeake Bay “pollution diet” announced by EPA on December 29. Based on the EPA’s determination to regulate greenhouse gases, which political advocates insist are one of the primary causes of global warming, the “diet” is an attempt to impose tighter controls on wastewater runoff from cities and agricultural concerns. Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia will be required to produce a 25% reduction in nitrogen, a 24% reduction in phosphorus and a 20% reduction in sediment runoff by 2025. Much of that reduction would be achieved by limiting farm fertilizer runoff and placing controls on large-scale animal feeding operations. The EPA announced that “mandatory controls on agriculture” could be enacted as early as 2013 in in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New York state if reductions in pollution “fall behind schedule.”