More than 200 Republican members of Congress introduced laws final week to strike down a Biden administration rule restoring long-standing federal protections for lots of of hundreds of streams and wetlands throughout the nation — safeguards that the Trump administration dismantled in 2020.
Among the co-sponsors of the House decision is Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.), who in 2017 paid $1.1 million in fines for illegally plowing 22 acres of federally protected streams and wetlands on his farm. The settlement adopted a yearslong authorized battle that started when Duarte employed a contractor to “rip,” or deep until, his total 450-acre property earlier than planting wheat, together with areas with federally protected waters.
The case garnered nationwide attention, and Duarte emerged as a kind of hero amongst anti-environmental zealots, agricultural pursuits and personal property rights teams. Another GOP member of California’s delegation even pointed to the case in a press release saying himself as a co-sponsor of the brand new House decision concentrating on the Biden administration’s new rules.
“President Biden’s expanded [Waters of the United States] rule is a huge land and water grab that gives the federal government overreaching authority on virtually any private property in the nation, placing homeowners, famers (sic), and small businesses under the thumb of EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) bureaucrats,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), a fourth-generation rice farmer, stated within the press launch.
LaMalfa highlighted three California landowners who he argues fell sufferer to “absurd” Obama-era clear water rules. At the highest of his record was Duarte — although as a substitute of figuring out Duarte as a sitting member of Congress and a co-sponsor of the decision, LaMalfa described his colleague as merely a “farmer.”
“In February 2013, with no warning or opportunity to discuss the matter, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers sent Tehama County farmer John Duarte a cease-and-desist letter to suspend farming operations, claiming that he had illegally filled wetlands on his wheat field by merely plowing it,” reads LaMalfa’s press launch, which borrows language from a piece in California Ag Today, a product of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. “Duarte was forced to spend millions to defend himself and protect himself from financial and personal ruin, and settled the case in August of 2017 at great cost.”
J. Scott Applewhite through Associated Press
In 2020, the Trump administration stripped away longstanding federal protections and changed President Barack Obama’s 2015 Waters of the U.S. regulation, higher often called WOTUS, which had prolonged stated federal protections to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, and have become a magnet for litigation. A federal decide struck down the Trump rule in 2021. And in late December, the Biden administration finalized its personal WOTUS guidelines, which largely restores protections that have been in place for many years previous to the Obama administration’s controversial modifications. Biden officers have stated that the Trump-era rule resulted in “significant environmental degradation.”
Duarte supported the Trump administration’s trade pleasant rollback and condemned Biden’s newest motion, arguing it could “put undue pressure on small businesses & local communities in the Valley.”
Duarte co-owns Duarte Nursery in California’s Central Valley. The firm makes a speciality of almonds, pistachios, walnuts and wine grapes, and boasts of being “one of the world’s largest permanent crop nurseries.” He and the corporate initially confronted a $2.8 million positive for illegally ripping federally protected waters on the property, however in the end reached a settlement settlement with the Justice Department that included $1.1 million in civil penalties and mitigation prices. In a press release saying the deal, the Department of Justice underneath President Donald Trump famous that “Duarte’s own environmental consultant had warned him that he would be subject to significant penalties for ripping without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.”
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a right-wing regulation firm with an extended file of combating to weaken environmental safeguards, represented Duarte within the case.
Duarte’s workplace didn’t reply to HuffPost’s requests for remark. But in a current interview with Fox News, the freshman congressman known as his personal expertise financially “devastating” and the Obama-era WOTUS regulation “misguided” and “a fiasco” for farmers.
“It’s a complete example of government overreach,” he advised Fox.
Duarte earns an annual wage of greater than $700,000 from his firm, in line with a monetary disclosure that’s required of all congressional candidates.
George Rose through Getty Images
Along with co-sponsoring the decision to dam Biden’s new guidelines, Duarte landed himself a seat on two House committees with jurisdiction over pure sources and environmental companies: the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee. His file of sparring with the federal authorities over stricter clear water guidelines all however definitely factored into his committee assignments.
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, which is a part of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, held a listening to titled “Stakeholder Perspectives on the Impacts of the Biden Administration’s Water of the United States (WOTUS) Rule.” Their witnesses, together with Garrett Hawkins, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, and Alicia Huey, chair of the National Association of Home Builders, known as on the Biden administration to set its new guidelines till the Supreme Court guidelines in Sackett v. EPA later this yr, a case that can determine EPA’s authority to manage wetlands underneath the Clean Water Act.
Duarte spent his allotted 5 minutes through the listening to rehashing his case — “a flashpoint for American farmers and Clean Water Act jurisdictions,” he known as it — and portraying himself a sufferer of a heavy-handed federgovernment.
“We all should look at my case very acutely and reflect upon our food system here in America,” Duarte stated. “I want to make sure that we are on record that this is anything but a small nuisance or a small threat to American farmers.”
Hawkins, of the Missouri Farm Bureau, thanked Duarte for his “leadership” and “example” through the years, and known as his story “an illustration of what we’ve seen across the country.”
Clean water advocates dismissed the concept that federal regulators handled Duarte unfairly.
“It’s disingenuous to paint Rep. John Duarte as a victim when the record is clear that he knowingly broke the law when he decided to destroy wetlands and streams on his property without a permit,” Jennifer Peters, water applications director at Clean Water Action, advised HuffPost.
As for Biden’s new guidelines, she and Jon Devine, director of federal water coverage for the Natural Resources Defense Council, say they’re something however burdensome. And they condemned the GOP’s effort to repeal them.
“This attempt to cancel very modest clean water regulations is a waste of time and its supporters aren’t being honest about the law,” Devine stated. “The Biden administration’s rules are built on, and closely resemble, policies that have been in place since the G.W. Bush administration, so even in the unimaginable scenario where this resolution is enacted, we’d simply revert back to virtually identical guidelines.”
“In reality our government needs to be doing much more to protect our water bodies, half of which are considered too polluted for fishing or swimming,” Peters stated.