House Legislation Rolls Back EPA Regulations on Agriculture

Press Release

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation cosponsored by Congressman Kevin Cramer to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from requiring additional permits for agriculture, mosquito, and other pesticide applications already regulated under separate law. The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act prohibits the EPA from imposing additional permitting requirements for pesticides it already regulates under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

In over 30 years of administering the Clean Water Act (CWA), the EPA never subjected FIFRA approved pesticides to CWA permitting requirements due to unnecessary duplication. However, coinciding with other EPA attempts to expand its regulatory authority, several lawsuits contended duplicative approval from the EPA was necessary and eventually in 2009 the Sixth Circuit required the EPA to develop a new duplicative CWA permit affecting an estimated 365,000 pesticide applicators per year at approximately $50,000 each annually. Violators could face $37,500 per day per violation in fines.

"The book of EPA overreach seems to get a new chapter every day. Here we have environmental groups forcing the EPA to add another layer of regulation complete with outrageous violation fees to an area of agriculture it already controls," said Cramer. "The last thing we need is two sets of bureaucrats at the same agency trying to regulate the same thing."

Cramer has been active in opposing the expansion of EPA authority under the CWA, including the newly proposed Waters of the U.S. rule, which would grant the federal government unprecedented regulatory authority over nearly all bodies of water including small ponds, creeks, ditches, and other occasionally wet areas, including those found on private property. This week he cosponsored additional legislation to ensure normal farming practices remain exempt from burdensome CWA regulations.

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