Editorial - Does Oregon care more about EPA than its ranchers?

The saddest part of the following question is that we even need to ask it.

Does Oregon’s state government care more about empowering federal bureaucrats than it does about the ranchers and farmers whose operations contribute billions of dollars annually to the state economy?

We don’t blame the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association for posing that query.

The issue revolves around which waterways the federal government has the authority to regulate under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in late June opined that its authority under the Clean Water Act extends to “waters of the United States” rather than only to major rivers and lakes defined as “navigable.”

This is a significant change.

Waters of the United States, based on the EPA’s proposed definition, could include tributaries to navigable waterways.

The definition is sufficiently murky, moreover, that it’s not implausible to believe the EPA could claim jurisdiction over seasonal waters such as irrigation ditches.

Ranchers and farmers, naturally, worry that the EPA’s potentially expanded authority could threaten their access to water, a commodity every bit as vital to a ranch or farm as it is to a person.

Thirteen states, most in the West, are challenging the EPA’s definition in court. In late August a federal court in North Dakota (one of the 13 plaintiff states) granted an injunction preventing the EPA from using its definition of waters of the United States to enforce the Clean Water Act in those states.
We’re disappointed that Oregon is not among those 13 states.

But that’s hardly the worst of it.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum didn’t merely decline to join those states in defending a vital industry against an overzealous executive branch, which insists on redefining its jurisdiction even though the U.S. House of Representatives both this year and last passed a resolution calling for the EPA to withdraw such a proposal.

Instead, Rosenblum went along with six other states and the District of Columbia in filing a legal motion supporting the EPA’s definition and its expanded authority to regulate water.

Rosenblum did so with the support of Gov. Kate Brown and officials from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Division of State Lands, said Ellen Klem, a spokeswoman in the Attorney General’s office.

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