A lawsuit filed by the Gulf Restoration Network seeks to require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to change how it measures water quality in the Mississippi River Basin, according to a recent interview with American Farm Bureau Federation’s (AFBF) Newsline.
In the interview, AFBF Legal Counsel Danielle Quist noted that the Gulf Restoration Network is requesting the EPA require water quality reports utilize numeric criteria, rather than narrative criteria.
“We don’t trust EPA to be able to establish numeric nutrient criteria for a major section of the United States,” Quist said. “It’s very technical. It’s very complex. So far there is not a lot of confidence that EPA could do something of this scale and do it correctly.”
Quist added that farmers and ranchers would be negatively impacted by the change in reporting, adding significant time and expense to the process. It also would shift power away from the states, which would violate the Clean Water Act.