Protect The Harvest | Op-ed: Indiana Fighting WOTUS Overreach of Biden’s EPA

This op-ed was submitted by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on behalf of Hoosier farmers and others.

One of my favorite parts of serving as Indiana’s attorney general is talking to Hoosiers across our great state. At a recent stop near the city of Greenfield, a reporter asked me: What’s the deal with your lawsuit against the Biden administration over the Waters of the United States rule — aka WOTUS?

It’s a fair question.

A casual reader of the headlines might wonder why Indiana and 23 other states would sue the federal government over a seemingly arcane change in how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines the term “navigable waters.”

But, with Biden’s blessing, the EPA has unilaterally expanded the authority Congress gave it to regulate actual navigable waters — think bodies of waters large enough to accommodate commercial watercraft along with certain streams that flow directly into them. The EPA has now declared it may exert control over a much larger category of ponds, streams, ditches and wet areas of ground.

In short, this is a power grab by unelected bureaucrats. With Biden’s blessing, they are trying to ride roughshod over the rights of farmers, homebuilders and other property owners. Further, they are usurping states’ sovereign authority over waters within their borders to the detriment of the federal structure.

Anyone familiar with U.S.