U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) convened a field hearing on Tuesday that explored the impact of EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regulations on private property rights.
Rounds, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight, hosted the hearing in Rapid City, South Dakota.
In his opening remarks, Rounds noted that the Obama administration has finalized 2,856 regulations since the president took office.
“These regulations have cost the American people nearly $810 billion dollars since 2009,” Rounds said. “Of these finalized regulations, 167 of them have come from the Environmental Protection Agency, and have cost American taxpayers $312 billion dollars — nearly half of the total cost of all regulations finalized by this administration.
The costs of these regulation are passed on to all citizens, Rounds continued, and private landowners often have limited resources to comply with burdensome, costly and complicated regulations.
“In 2015, the EPA moved forward with finalizing the Waters of the US Rule, broadly expanding the Clean Water Act, which would give the EPA unprecedented authority over significant land masses not currently subject to EPA jurisdiction,” Rounds said. “This rule creates significant hurdles to normal agricultural operations, and despite the EPA’s claims that the rule will have minimal economic impact, the final rule is contrary to the comments of agriculture groups, the Small Business Administration and numerous state governors and attorneys general.”
Even though the Sixth Circuit Court issued a nationwide stay of the rule, there is evidence that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could be moving forward with implementation, Rounds warned.
“The U.S. court system should not be the primary backstop against overly burdensome rules,” Rounds said. “If the EPA worked more closely with landowners, states and agriculture groups throughout the rulemaking process, the end result would be better rules that minimize the impact and costs on private landowners and American business while still achieving the goal of environmental protection.”
Rounds said that the subcommittee has worked to conduct systematic oversight of the federal regulatory process, and that Tuesday’s hearing was a continuation of that work.