Regulatory overreach sinks another farm family

The court decision against this farm family demonstrates why there is so much anger against Washington bureaucracy.  he story starts in June, 2002, and was finally determined on April 11, 2016. Arland and Cindy Foster farm in Miner County, S.D. Their farmland is in Prairie Pothole country. EPA, under its WOTUS regulation, seeks to regulate Prairie Potholes. USDA also regulates Prairie Potholes because in 1985 USDA was authorized to determine whether certain farm lands qualify as wetlands. The Fosters initially sought a wetlands determination for 0.8 acres in 2002. In 2011, USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) finally concluded the site was a wetland. USDA’s National Appeals Division (NAD) then issued a 14-page decision saying that NRCS from 2002-2011 had followed “…the proper procedures and had appropriately found that Site 1 was a wetland and that the Fosters had not met their burden of proving the NRCS’s determination was erroneous.”