The largest U.S. farm group asked for Supreme Court review of the EPA’s “pollution diet” designed to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff into the Chesapeake Bay. The “diet” dates from 2010, when the agency set a total maximum daily load for runoff from the six states and the District of Columbia in the Bay’s watershed, and a 2025 deadline for adoption of local steps to reduce pollution. The American Farm Bureau Federation and allies that include builders and other farm groups challenged the EPA initiative in court and lost at the U.S. district and appellate court levels.
In asking for the Supreme Court to rule on the case, AFBF called the “pollution diet” a heavy-handed federal intrusion into local activities. “This is nothing less than federal super-zoning authority,” said AFBF president Bob Stallman. An AFBF attorney said the EPA designed its Chesapeake Bay plan as a model that it could use in other parts of the country.
When the appellate court ruled in July, the Baltimore Sun said municipal wastewater agencies and environmental groups had sided with EPA, “arguing that if federal regulators could not insist on across-the-board pollution reductions, urban and suburban water and sewer customers would be left to shoulder the entire cleanup burden. Agriculture is the leading source of nutrient and sediment pollution, according to the EPA, while storm-water runoff is the only source of pollution still growing.”