American Farm Bureau Plans to Bring Chesapeake Bay Case to Supreme Court
This summer we shared the rulings from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and allies vs. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF). See here.
The most recent ruling from the Third Circuit was the result of an appeal from the AFBF of a lower court decision upholding the legality of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint in 2010 (the Blueprint that sets Total Maximum Daily Loads or TMDLs for the Bay states and Washington, D.C.). While all Bay states and D.C. support this Blueprint, and are committed to cleaning up their watershed, pushback is coming from interest groups and states outside of the Bay watershed. These groups originally sued the EPA for overstepping on an issue that they claim should be left up to the states. The EPA argues that it has the right and responsibility to uphold the Clean Water Blueprint under the Clean Water Act. Groups, such as the AFBF, fear that the EPA’s role in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed will set a precedent, allowing the federal government to intervene in the cleanup of other major watersheds around the nation, such as the Mississippi River Watershed. Big agriculture groups fear that they would be a major target of watershed cleanup plans. As such, the AFBF and its allies plan to appeal the Third Circuit court decision, and bring the case before the Supreme Court.
Chesapeake Bay environment and water quality blog 