Recently a long running and well publicized lawsuit was settled. It involved Duarte Nursery v. Army Corps of Engineers. Much has been written about it (example here) and many cite it as a case of government overreach. Essentially Duarte plowed a field that was pasture land, but which had previously been a farm over two decades ago. The government argued that some of the ‘vernal pools‘ were impacted, and were regulated under the Clean Water Act.
The biggest ramification is that “the court held that an exemption to the Clean Water Act for ‘normal farming activities’ on an ‘established farming operation’ did not apply.” The land was not farmed from 1998 to 2012 so the Clean Water Act takes presidency.
The BIG open question is what this means for CRP land. For decades the US has been paying farmers to enter 10 to 15 year contracts for the farmers to not farm parcels of land and convert them to wildlife habitat. From wikipedia, “One of the most important benefits provided by CRP is the improvement of water quality due to the reduction of erosion and runoff reaching water bodies.”
Putting these two together, what happens to CRP land after the government lease ends? Can the government regulate away the ability to farm the land forever because there has been no ‘established farming operation’ for an extended period of time?
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