EPA and navigable waters

I hope you guys take the time to read this. My thinking is that if you are for big government and more intrusion, then do nothing. If you think the EPA and big government are getting out of hand, then tell others and comment. We definitely need to let our congressmen and senators know how we feel.

Copied from the article:

Farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to remain in production often depends on being able to use the types of farm practices that would be prohibited if EPA denies a permit for them. For example, building a fence across a ditch, applying fertilizer or pesticides, or pulling weeds could require a federal permit. The proposed rule, in effect, would give EPA veto authority over a farmer’s or rancher’s ability to operate.

Here's the link to comment:

Please go to www.fbactinsider.org NOW to tell EPA and the Corps to DITCH THE RULE!
Ditch the Rule

Just one more step in the goal of controlling every inch of ground or water in every way possible. The worst thing is that most of this is being done through changes in the regulations and not through changes in legislation.

Exactly, how do you know the site is fully truthful and not biased to serve someones else interest. And in my area, we can see what loose regulation of farmers, commercial watermen and corrupt local governments catering to their interests rather than the majority can cause. The death of the Chesapeake Bay. A perfect example of what happens letting people do what is in their own interests is the eradication plains buffalo, burning rivers in Ohio, deadly smog in Utah, LA, Colo. etc, etc.

Even changes in regulation can be stopped. WE HAVE to be persistent in contacting our legislators!!

It is really time that the regulations look at non point source pollution. Farms are corporations, just like factories. They should be responsible for effluent.

Don't you want clean water for the next generation or do you want them to have to buy it?

I grew up in a small factory town near Detroit. I can remember the Rouge river turning bright orange, and it catching fire sometimes. Lack of regulation let industry turn it into a cesspool . It was cheaper to pay the fines, if you got caught, than to dispose of waste properly. One local dairy here is milking 2700 cows. They produce more poop than a small city! Do you think they should just dump it in the river?

Most people only want rules that keep others from harming them. If your neighbor was dumping toxic chemicals on his own property, that were then leeching into your drinking well, most would be fast on the phone to ask the government to intervene.

But when the shoe is on the other foot, and the guy with the well is causing harm to others, and a rule stops him, he calls it over-regulation and needless government intrusion.

Odd how some people can think both ways.

Years ago I got a great deal on a vacation place in New Bern, NC and took my family there. Turned out that the reason it was so inexpensive was that the Neuse river was so polluted that there were signs everywhere warning you not to even touch the water. All the pig farms (many thousands of animals) were allowed to just dump their waste into what they called ponds. Giant cesspools that were leaching into the ground water. It was spooky to drive around marinas and recreational places in the middle of what was high season and not see a single boat. It took people losing tons of money for the rules/regulations to change. The area is cleaner now thanks to the bad guys at the EPA etc.

just search for Russell Bliss or Times Beach.....

(quoted from post at 10:25:27 05/17/14) Most people only want rules that keep others from harming them. If your neighbor was dumping toxic chemicals on his own property, that were then leeching into your drinking well, most would be fast on the phone to ask the government to intervene.

But when the shoe is on the other foot, and the guy with the well is causing harm to others, and a rule stops him, he calls it over-regulation and needless government intrusion.

Odd how some people can think both ways.

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this!

Amazing just how abundant the people on this site are. Guess its time to totally leave it.
You guys who want all the regulations really can't be true rural farmers can you? No one in their right mind can want more government over sight. I want clean water for my kids and grandkids, but I also want to be able to somewhat control what happens around my house.

Any herd of cattle or equivalent weight of other critters is regulated in my state, county, fed if they are over 10 head. If you are within 300 feet of any water you are regulated on smaller herds.

Isn't it already that way everywhere?

I need to reapply every 4 years for a conditional use per it to graze 25-35 head of cattle.

This is just another layer of more regulations. More control.

Seems A lot on this site want farmers to disappear, import our food from Ukraine, Brazil, China, Africa.

We already have regulations on everything. To tile I need to put applications in front of 4 different offices, 2 county, state, and fed administered by a different county office.

You boys have your regulations already. Haven't you paid attention since mid 1980s? The regulations are heavy and crippling. They made good sense for a while, as mentioned it was too wide open back in the 50s, 60s, 70s.

Things have changed.

And you want more?

Yikes this country is going in the wrong direction.

Paul

Well I guess you don't want the government to stop oil from fracking next to your well? Or stop miners from blasting next to your property.

I remember when people living next to a river flushed their toilets in the river. The river that went throught our farm was called the yellow river for a good reason.

Non-point source means you blame someone when you can"t find the real reason. I remember a Soils class at U of MN about 1970. Natural runoff of MN forest land exceeded govt regs.

So sorry to hear of the death of the Chesapeake Bay! I had not heard about its passing. I'll bet your "area", the high population density urban/suburban Baltimore to Washington D.C. corridor, had absolutely nothing do with any pollution that contributed to the "death". By the way, what do you eat, I am confident you don't support greedy commercial fishermen and greedy farmers by purchasing their products, so what exactly do you eat?

Two things annoy me. You guys on the far right and you folks on the far left. Both of you want it "your way". At my age I have seen both results and I didn't like either. I have seen pollution so bad that you could die if you went swimming in the rivers. I have seen regs so limiting that you can't do anything. Compromise and put in good regulations is the answer. Regs that make sense. We live in a society not a "free to do anything you want" country. Every thing to moderation not a free to do anything you want society. You want an example. Strip mines. Used to be all money no regs. What a mess.

Well said. Common sense does not seem to be very common anymore.

I hate the EPA too, but I see both sides of it.

My grandfather, (died 7 years ago) had a business where he sprayed dirt roads with waste oil, yep motor oil. In this day and age if you sprayed 300 gallons of waste oil on a 1 mile strip of dirt road you would be hauled off to jail, and you would eventually get a court date.

The business my grandfather had went down the crapper in 1980 I think. (he sold what was left to a small refinery) He got a small percentage of what it was worth.

Hamstringing farmers is stupid, especially on using waters next to their farms for irrigation. But.....Dumping animal poop in the water is bad, obviously.

I ran into a guy at a gas station years ago and he was hollering up a storm at why he should be allowed to have as many chickens as he wants on his 1/2 acre plot of land in the city. Blah, blah, blah. I didn't pay any attention to him. Sanitary laws exist to prevent morons like this from having 20 chickens in the city. I took one look at him while I was paying for my gas and said, I am sure glad you aint my neighbor.

I do agree that the EPA needs to have 80% of the gubbermint leaches that get a check from there laid off. Common sense needs to be adopted/followed/obeyed.

We must have limits, the problem is bureaucrats in government want to regulate everything if they can measure a change it must be regulated. Our planet and our bodies all have some ability to tolerate variances in them, meaning there is a range of normal and even just outside of normal the body or planet can tolerate. One of the fallacies of Global Warming is the assumption that the earth is static, yet as we went through the normal warming cycle of the 70's and 80's the earth responded. As more water remained open through the winter more water vapor got into the air, that water in the air was able to soak up BTUs.

I used to run a waste water processing facility that was licensed to discharge water into the Obion river in western Tennessee. Notice I say licensed, we actually didn't discharge, we irrigated our water onto a spray field adjacent to the river and yes we had a berm so water didn't run into the river and we irrigated so we had no standing water on the field. More than once we were questioned (read accused) because they were finding fecal coliforms down river from us. In those occasions they usually found a dead animal, often a deer, in the river. This was a natural occurrence yet the regulators were very worried. In one instance I had water running out of a retention pound (not part of our treatment system) into a ditch, the water was a different color than the water in the ditch. A technician from the government saw it, all of a sudden my parents weren't married, I was violating the law, I was going to jail and they were going to close us down. Took samples from the pound outfall and were each ditch ran into another. The funny colored water coming out of our "polluted pond" was cleaner than the water in the ditch (which happened to be cleaner than the river). Oh yes the pond water was about 1/2 the organic strength of what we were permitted to send to the river. The supervisor of the DNR failed to pursue any action against me or my employer as he didn't see any violation, except maybe I wasn't filing the paperwork for the discharge. Again just because you can measure a change doesn't mean it is a problem.

Ever notice how these left wingers reject the belief that a supreme being (God) created us in favor of evolution, but now that they're on the scene evolution stops and the world, that evolution deems to be dynamic becomes static?

My thought would be one bad apple spoils the barrel .i have seen bigger farmers doing a better job then small farmers and the reverse can be true to. I feel sad when you drive by a very poorly taken care of farm on a busy highway .its like driving down a street and seeing a run down house.i always try and keep the place picked up manure hauled and cattle well taken care of it makes a good selling point if somebody wants to by your products

This is probably a done deal. The public comment period is merely a formality. If you can float a rubber duck in it at least once every 50 years, it's going to be a navigable waterway. They will respond to a few comments in a fashion that will solidify their position. They won't respond to hypotheticals, even if they try to enforce rules based on hypothetical situations. They're tweeking it so it will pass the smell test with the majority. This will look good on paper, and, even if well-intentioned, will be an absolute nightmare for farmers. This will probably add 25%+ to both the budget and workforce of the EPA, which is this agency's true goal.

I do hope they apply this to everyone fairly. They won't. I have to have permits and training if I'm going to spread manure and fertilizers. Paperwork left and right, setbacks here and limits there. Homeowner can spread tons to the acre right in the ditch. No rules, no reg's. to stop them. Exact same fertilizers that are available to the farmers are available to homeowners in most localities. Gotta keep that grass green. Seems a homeowner with a low area in their yard shouldn't be able to disturb that natural lowland adjacent to a ditch/navigable waterway, or the navigable waterway/ditch itself. No fertilizer, chemicals, mowing, draining, etc.. Tall grass/weeds prevent erosion and absorb runoff. The EPA won't dare enforce any of this on the average homeowner.

Rules and laws will never stop those who will willfully violate them. They only provide a framework for punishing after the fact. Rapes, murders and larceny still happen every day. Some offenders return to society to become offenders yet again after being punished. More rules and laws tend to overstep common sense. Some doofus kid that brings a girly-mag to school has to register as a s&x offender for life? What a country.

There are also those on this site that always B&M about their neighbors lowering their property value. What would you say if the feds stepped in and told you that you couldn't live in your house anymore, even if it was perfectly habitable, and the locals still wanted to collect the property taxes on the your house? This is going to happen to farmers in the coming decade. Regulations are going to take large portions of ground out of production and make more ground less productive. I doubt the farmers will be getting property tax brakes at the state and local levels. It'll still be classified as farmland. You just won't be able to farm it (properly) anymore.

I do hope the US develops a sudden love for foreign food. That's where everything, including American cheese will come from very soon.

AG

no moron, it's fertilizer, not toxic waste. Time to pull your head out....

You said: "I do hope the US develops a sudden love for foreign food. That's where everything, including American cheese will come from very soon."

USDA Facts say we are planting more acres than ever and the yields are at record per acre levels.


USDA report. Look it up on google

Corn 2013, largest number of acres planted since 1936.

Soybeans 2014, record high 81.4 million acres up 6% over previous year.

All wheat 2014 down 1% to 55 million acres

Cotton 2014, about 11 million acres up 7% from last year.

Sugar beets down 2%

Regulations reducing production?

Amen.

Government Cheese!
poke here:

(quoted from post at 02:54:12 05/18/14) You said: "I do hope the US develops a sudden love for foreign food. That's where everything, including American cheese will come from very soon."

USDA Facts say we are planting more acres than ever and the yields are at record per acre levels.


USDA report. Look it up on google

Corn 2013, largest number of acres planted since 1936.

Soybeans 2014, record high 81.4 million acres up 6% over previous year.

All wheat 2014 down 1% to 55 million acres

Cotton 2014, about 11 million acres up 7% from last year.

Sugar beets down 2%

Regulations reducing production?

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Wow. You found some figures from last year and some estimates (throw it at a dartboard and hope it sticks types of guesses) for this year. You do get a gold star for effort.

You seem to have some comprehension issues. With all of your "common sense" it would stand to reason you actually read what I wrote. I said "very soon" because these rules haven't been implemented yet. What will be the final form isn't even available to the public yet, and once it is we'll all need a law degree to understand it. Production acreage will decrease and yields will decrease in many areas if proper drainage isn't allowed for and if land use and agricultural techniques are further restricted. Livestock likely will have to be removed or relocated from certain areas if this is implemented in the fashion that many seem to think the EPA is heading with it.

EPA will use surely use "common sense" in applying fair and reasonable judgement regulating us. Mike and Chantell Sackett's case is a fine example of how much of your life and your wallet you get to waste for the privilege of battling with a bloated, overreaching government agency called the Environmental Protection Agency over nothing. They had to sue the EPA for the right to even challenge an EPA decision on a regulation and potential fines resulting for that decision, and in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, we all now have the right to challenge the EPA and other regulatory agencies' decisions.

Look it up on google.

AG

(quoted from post at 06:25:21 05/17/14) Exactly, [b:734d0948f6]how do you know the site is fully truthful and not biased to serve someones else interest.[/b:734d0948f6] And in my area, we can see what loose regulation of farmers, commercial watermen and corrupt local governments catering to their interests rather than the majority can cause. The death of the Chesapeake Bay. A perfect example of what happens letting people do what is in their own interests is the eradication plains buffalo, burning rivers in Ohio, deadly smog in Utah, LA, Colo. etc, etc.

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'
The link appears to be from the Farm Bureau. So the interest it serves would be FARMERS. We can have common sense and a clean environment or we can have over reaching idiocy and and end to being a 1st world nation. That's pretty much our choice.

The link appears to be from the Farm Bureau. So the interest it serves would be FARMERS. We can have common sense and a clean environment or we can have over reaching idiocy and and end to being a 1st world nation. That's pretty much our choice.[/quote]



The link is from Farm Bureau. I do believe we need some regulation, but as you say, " we can have over reaching idiocy and and end to being a 1st world nation. That's pretty much our choice." The thing that bothers me is that big brother is watching us and will calculate every move we make. A mining company here was fined last year for re-routing a small stream. How did the MO DNR find out, google earth. It all goes back to common sense, there is none, out the window. Those that don't have any are making the rules for us. Just like lemmings, follow them right over the cliff if we do nothing.

This was supposed to start about the same time they enacted the rule about on-farm fuel/oil storage, catch basins/leak containment, and emergency spill plans. What it is designed to do is put every can of gas and quart of oil on the place under EPA scrutiny.
Like putting $4,000 worth of fuel into an old rusty tank that's about to spring a leak isn't incentive enough to replace said tank.....

Someone mentioned fracking. Whenever we get into discussions like this and it involves fracking or coal or wood or damming a river or whatever, there's always a mess of people dead set against whatever you want to do. What bothers me with that is that it's often the same people (not pointing fingers at anyone here) that want cheap power, to be warm in winter and cool in summer, to be able to go here and there. The point is that for every thing we do there is a price. Whether it's cheap food, low cost power, low cost fuels, whatever, someone is going to pay in one way of another.

(quoted from post at 19:20:35 05/17/14) My thought would be one bad apple spoils the barrel .i have seen bigger farmers doing a better job then small farmers and the reverse can be true to. I feel sad when you drive by a very poorly taken care of farm on a busy highway .its like driving down a street and seeing a run down house.i always try and keep the place picked up manure hauled and cattle well taken care of it makes a good selling point if somebody wants to by your products

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Yeah, what he said ^^^^

Funny how some people love to pi$$ and moan about the lack of common sense in government, but are blind to the lack of common sense in those being governed. Hey, if you do something like dump your all your toxic junk in a river so it becomes someone else's problem you can expect there to be rules or regulation put in place to punish you for doing it again. And those rules and regulations grow to become a burden to everyone. Duh!