WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released the following statement regarding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ proposal to replace a 2015 rule put in place by the Obama Administration that gave authority to the federal government to regulate on nearly all of the land in Iowa.
“I commend President Trump and his administration for stepping up to fix the mistakes of the out-of-touch Obama administration. The Waters of the U.S. rule was an ill-conceived overreach. The rule and its drafting process were flawed from the beginning. It would have defined 97 percent of Iowa as a waterway, meaning that if implemented, family farmers and other small business owners would have had to get permission from Washington bureaucrats to move soil on dry land.
“The move announced today by the Trump administration would set commonsense limits on state versus federal jurisdiction over waterways and make it simpler to comply with regulations aimed at improving water quality. I want to thank President Trump for his leadership, for keeping the promise he made to Rural America to repeal this rule and for providing commonsense regulatory relief to the people of Iowa and Americans across the country.”
Grassley has long spoken out against the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule and voted to defund the flawed rule. Grassley, along with Sen. Joni Ernst and members of the Iowa congressional delegation urged then-President-elect Trump to scrap the rule and praised EPA in June of 2017 for taking action to withdraw the rule.
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