Latest news with #Swampbuster
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Federal judge dismisses suit that threatened wetlands on farmland nationwide
A federal judge in Iowa dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday that threatened millions of acres of wetlands, ecosystems that mitigate flooding, reduce water pollution and support biodiversity. While the lawsuit implicated wetlands nationwide, the battleground was a 72-acre farm in Delaware County, Iowa, owned by Chicago-based investor James Conlan. Conlan has over 1,000 acres of farmland in Iowa, which he leases to farmers who work the land. In some cases, he aims to eventually sell the land to developers. Represented by the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation and Liberty Justice Center, Conlan argued that a federal provision colloquially known as Swampbuster, which discourages farmland owners from converting wetlands into cropland, infringes on property rights. Conlan and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment following the decision, which detailed how his gripe with Swampbuster originated three years ago when he sought to cut down trees on 9 of his 72 acres federally designated as wetlands. Under the law, this would have made him and the farmer who leases the land ineligible for federal benefits such as subsidies, loans and insurance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and several environmental and sustainable agriculture groups countered that compliance with Swampbuster was voluntary. Farmers can drain and till wetlands, but if they do, they cannot expect to receive taxpayer dollars. An expectation of land stewardship is central to the partnership between farmers and the public, said Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer and president of the Iowa Farmers Union, one of the several groups that joined with the federal government in the case. 'Thursday's decision means we can continue to have farm programs that have integrity,' he said Friday afternoon as he planted soybeans on his farm in Polk County, Iowa. Swampbuster protects 78 million acres, or two-thirds of the wetlands remaining in the continental U.S., according to Food and Water Watch, another group that joined the case in support of Swampbuster. In the upper Midwest, 30 million acres of wetlands, including over 640,000 in Iowa and 1 million in Illinois, are at risk of being destroyed by industrial agriculture, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Over half the nation's original wetlands have already been destroyed by farming, development and climate change since the 1780s. 'Every day Americans, and especially homeowners — they might not even know about this case — but it was a big win for them. Wetlands in the Midwest and across the country provide billions of dollars in mitigation benefits by preventing people from losing their homes due to floods,' said Katie Garvey, an attorney at the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center who represented the environmental and sustainable agriculture groups. Wetlands are natural sponges and filters, absorbing excess water to prevent flooding and catching pollutants before they run into local waterways. They are also critical habitats for a variety of plants and animals. Garvey and her colleagues were pleasantly surprised by the Agriculture Department's continued defense of Swampbuster under the Trump administration. The lawsuit was originally filed under the Biden administration. 'We've been very relieved to see that this administration is continuing to support the USDA and defend Swampbuster,' she said. Chief Judge C.J. Williams, who presided over the case, was also appointed to the Northern Iowa District Court by President Donald Trump during his first term. 'I think that part of the reason is that these programs are really popular with farmers and with Trump's base,' said Dani Replogle, a staff attorney with Food and Water Watch. 'I wonder if that is maybe contributing to them being a little bit more cautious with programs that benefit farmers and benefit farming more broadly?' Lehman warned that the alternative to the voluntary Swampbuster program is a total regulatory environment where farmers don't have choice on whether to comply with conservation programs. 'The only other options would be neglecting the environment or a total regulatory environment, which would be difficult,' he said. The fight to over Swampbuster's fate — and the millions of wetlands it protects — isn't over yet, however. Conlan's team plans to appeal the decision to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis, according to a statement posted by the Liberty Justice Center on X Thursday evening. 'We're confident that the appellate court will ultimately rule that this federal law is unconstitutional. This law has been taking land from farmers for years, and we look forward to continuing to fight this unconstitutional law,' said the statement, which Conlan's lawyers referred the Tribune to, in lieu of an interview.
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
This Land Is His Land. But Is It Wetland?
Driving through the gently sloping terrain of northeast Iowa, there is little to distinguish Jim Conlan's land, a stretch of light brown dirt sprinkled with tallgrass and maples, from the other fields where soybeans and cornstalks will soon sprout from the ground. But if Mr. Conlan has his way, his plot in Delaware County will lead to a permanent change in how farmland is used across the country. For 40 years, to remain eligible for federal crop insurance and other government programs, American farmers have been required to preserve wetlands on their properties. That federal provision, known as Swampbuster, has been credited by environmentalists with keeping countless acres of vulnerable land unplowed, and has been upheld over the decades by Republican and Democratic administrations. But where conservationists see an essential guardrail against habitat destruction, Mr. Conlan sees government run amok. Backed by legal groups that support libertarian causes, Mr. Conlan is challenging Swampbuster in federal court, asking not just to open nine acres of wetland in his field to cultivation, but to have that entire provision of federal law deemed unconstitutional. He is seeking to build on a series of recent court decisions that have reduced the role of federal agencies in regulating private land and have rolled back wetland protections. 'The bigger principle is that the federal government doesn't have the authority to regulate private property,' said Loren Seehase, a lawyer at the Liberty Justice Center who is among those representing Mr. Conlan's company, CTM Holdings. Environmental groups, already reeling from a series of major court losses, have mobilized to defend Swampbuster, warning that millions of acres of protected wetlands could be in peril if the provision is invalidated. The threat, they say, goes beyond wetlands. If the courts buy the legal theory that Mr. Conlan is pushing, they believe that other provisions, including one called Sodbuster that sets aside rural land that is considered highly erodible, could be in jeopardy in the future. 'This is a part of a reckless and dangerous assault on our bedrock environmental law,' said Dani Replogle, a lawyer for Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group that has intervened in Mr. Conlan's lawsuit against the federal Department of Agriculture. Ms. Replogle said her opponents were 'essentially right-wing extremists who are trying to turn wetlands into a boogeyman for government overreach.' The fight over Swampbuster is playing out against the backdrop of a Trump administration that has taken a skeptical approach toward many longstanding federal regulations, moving to loosen or discard rules on commercial fishing, coal production and the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, among others. Environmentalists have worried that federal officials might be newly sympathetic to efforts to invalidate Swampbuster. But so far, at least, U.S.D.A. lawyers have continued to defend Swampbuster in court and have questioned whether Mr. Conlan had properly appealed the wetland classification concerning his land. Agriculture Department officials did not respond to a request for comment about the legal fight. When Swampbuster was passed as part of the 1985 Farm Bill, the country's wetlands were disappearing rapidly, and policymakers were concerned that federal farm subsidies had given farmers an incentive to plant crops on any land they could, including sensitive habitats. Wetlands, defined by the government as lands that are covered by water or where water is present at or near the surface of the soil for at least part of the year, play an important role in storing and filtering water and are home to many species of plants and animals. Swampbuster allowed farmers to continue planting on wetlands that had already been producing crops, but said that untouched wetlands had to remain crop-free if farmers wished to receive government benefits, including certain U.S.D.A. loans, subsidy payments, disaster assistance payments and federally subsidized crop insurance. Many farmers and landowners rely on those programs, which collectively cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, to sustain their businesses and help them rebound from natural disasters. Mr. Conlan, a lawyer and financier who grew up on an Iowa farm, said he had no intention of suing the government when he bought his roughly 72-acre property in 2022 on the outskirts of the town of Delaware, population 140. The land, part of which is wooded, borders a wastewater treatment facility and a four-lane highway, and the whir of speeding semi trucks drowns out the sound of chirping birds. Scattered in patches around the property are a total of nine acres of wetlands, surrounded by drier ground where Mr. Conlan's tenant has grown corn in recent years. With thousands of vehicles buzzing by each day, Mr. Conlan, who splits his time between Chicago and Philadelphia, said he figured that the field he bought might eventually be developed for commercial uses, which would not be restricted by Swampbuster. In the short term, he would lease it out to a farmer to grow corn or soybeans, just as Mr. Conlan does with roughly 1,000 other acres of farmland he owns across Iowa. Mr. Conlan's tenant in Delaware County receives federally subsidized crop insurance for the crops he raises on the plot, one of Mr. Conlan's lawyers said. The lawyer said he was unsure whether any of Mr. Conlan's tenants benefit from U.S.D.A. programs other than crop insurance. After acquiring the Delaware County land, Mr. Conlan said he became convinced that the nine acres classified as wetlands by the government, which he said are not visibly wet or connected to waterways, were not really wetlands at all. He raised the issue with U.S.D.A., which administers Swampbuster, and eventually decided to take the agency to court. Though he believes his land is wrongly classified, he also wants the entire Swampbuster provision declared unconstitutional. 'You can't just take people's property, give them no compensation and say, 'tough luck,'' Mr. Conlan said. Recent Supreme Court decisions have limited federal agencies' environmental rule-making authority and helped open a lane to challenge Swampbuster. In 2023, the court said the Clean Water Act did not allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate discharges into wetlands near bodies of water unless the wetlands have 'a continuous surface connection' to those waters. In 2022, the court limited the E.P.A.'s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. One of the firms representing Mr. Conlan, the Pacific Legal Foundation, represented landowners in the 2023 wetlands case. 'From the Supreme Court, especially, there's been a lot of changes in administrative law, and I think that makes courts more receptive to our arguments,' said Jeff McCoy, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation who is involved in the Swampbuster case. The outcome of the case, Mr. Conlan's lawyers said, should matter even to Americans who will never own an acre of farmland. Conditioning farm subsidies on a landowner promising to conserve wetlands, Ms. Seehase said, would be like requiring Social Security beneficiaries to sign a document relinquishing their right to own a gun, or conditioning food stamp eligibility on a promise to not speak negatively about the government. While some farmers see Swampbuster as overreach, others see it as a reasonable and necessary protection. John Gilbert, a longtime corn, soybean and dairy farmer in Iowa, said he feared that there would be environmental and health consequences if Swampbuster were to disappear. Mr. Gilbert is on the board of the Iowa Farmers Union, which has intervened in Mr. Conlan's lawsuit. He said in court filings that 'Swampbuster is the last thumb in the dike preventing total destruction of our natural ecosystems.' 'Farm programs are not entitlements,' Mr. Gilbert said in an interview, and it is 'perfectly reasonable for the taxpayers to expect some minimal behavior standards for farmers' who receive federal funds. For now, all sides are waiting to see how a federal district judge in Iowa rules in the case. The judge, C.J. Williams, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, heard arguments last month, and could announce a decision at any time. There is a widespread expectation, though, that Judge Williams's ruling, whatever it may be, will not be the final word. Lawyers on both sides said they would strongly consider appealing if they lost, and they expected their opponents to do the same.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
South Dakota stands to lose its live-giving waters
The sun sets on the LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge near Martin, South Dakota, in April 2021. (John Deuter/USDA NRCS South Dakota, public license) Hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands in northeastern South Dakota are likely to lose federal protection under the Trump administration's proposed narrow interpretation of what water is important to preserve. The proposed restrictive definition says a wetland deserves protection only if it has a continuous surface connection to a navigable stream or lake. That leaves almost all of South Dakota's 1.7 million acres of wetlands, which are home to about half of all threatened and endangered species, at the mercy of land developers and agricultural interests. A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) shows the catastrophic loss of federal protections for wetlands across the United States. 'Wild places are worth fighting for': Concern grows for receding South Dakota wetlands Using Geographic Information System (GIS) modeling, the model can zero in on specific counties. It shows that more than 70 million acres of wetlands — approximately 84% of the total area protected before the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision — are left without federal safeguards. It also shows that nonperennial streams, which make up the vast majority of U.S. waterways and are essential for drinking water and flood mitigation, are also at risk. If only perennial streams remain protected, more than 8 million miles of U.S. streams could lose Clean Water Act protections. Under the Trump administration's definition, about 460,000 individual wetlands covering about 743,000 acres in northeastern South Dakota's 10 most affected counties would be at risk. The most impacted counties in order are Brown, Beadle, Hand, Spink, Faulk, Edmunds, Roberts, McPherson, Sanborn and Hyde. An additional threat is emerging in a lawsuit in Iowa that seeks to overturn the federal Swampbuster and Sodbuster provisions that tie wetland preservation to farm safety-net programs. Arguments were heard Monday in Cedar Rapids. At the federal level, organizations and individuals will have opportunities this month to voice their support for wetlands. The EPA has offered a general 30-day public comment period and a series of listening sessions. Schedules for states, tribes, industry and agricultural stakeholders and environmental and conservation stakeholders have been set from April 29 to May 1, but a listening session for the general public has not been announced. The odds of convincing the Trump administration to broaden its protection appear daunting. In the Sackett decision, the court ruled that wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act only when they have a 'continuous surface connection' to other covered waters. It also held that other waters, like streams, are only protected if they are 'relatively permanent.' The Biden administration liberally interpreted what constituted a connection, but Trump's Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers are taking a strict approach, excluding most of what we think of as a wetland or marsh or protected streams. 'Our analysis confirms that the Supreme Court has gutted the Clean Water Act's ability to protect our wetlands, exposing communities to increased flooding, worsening water pollution, and threatening habitats that sustain wildlife and local economies,' said Jon Devine, freshwater ecosystems director at NRDC. In South Dakota, potentially '93 percent of wetland area and 99 percent of individual wetlands are predicted to lack protection,' the NRDC analysis said. The National Wildlife Federation, which is the nation's largest hunting and fishing conservation organization, is also voicing opposition. 'This will be the fourth rule attempting to define the Waters of the United States in a decade. We need to stop playing political ping pong with this vital issue,' said Jim Murphy, the federation's director of legal advocacy. 'With the likelihood of a skeletal workforce at EPA, this move will put even more pressure and expense on states and localities to ensure our water is safe.' For South Dakota, which does not have a state wetland program plan or a wetland monitoring plan, a resource so important to the state's $1.4 billion annual fishing and hunting economy and quality of life appears as threatened as the species that depend on their life-giving waters. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Chicago Tribune
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Farmers head to court to protect wetlands against suit by Chicago investor and two law firms
Several Iowa farmers have joined the federal government to defend a long-standing Farm Bill provision that protects wetlands against a challenge by a Chicago-based investor and two libertarian law firms. A ruling against the defendants could endanger wetlands nationwide and upend how the government determines eligibility for federal programs. The parties head to a courthouse Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In the upper Midwest, 30 million acres of wetlands, including over 640,000 in Iowa and 1 million in Illinois, are at risk of being destroyed by industrial agriculture, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The provision in question, colloquially known as Swampbuster, has discouraged farmers from turning wetlands into cropland since 1985. Under the law, any farmer who drains a wetland on their property is ineligible for federal benefits such as subsidies, loans and insurance. Swampbuster protects about 78 million acres of wetlands, according to Food and Water Watch. That's two-thirds of the wetlands remaining in the continental United States after agriculture, development and climate change have cut their footprint in half since the 1780s. These ecosystems serve as natural sponges and filters, absorbing excess water to prevent flooding and catching pollutants before they run into local waterways. Wetlands are also a critical habitat for a variety of plants and animals. However, the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit last April in federal court in Iowa, argue that Swampbuster amounts to government overreach because it safeguards wetlands not protected under the Clean Water Act. 'Just because Congress couldn't directly regulate it, they can't threaten to take away pre-existing programs to get the same outcome,' said Jeffery McCoy, a lawyer representing Chicago investor James Conlan. McCoy's firm, Pacific Legal Foundation, successfully fought a Supreme Court case last year that curtailed the Clean Water Act's wetland protections. He called Swampbuster 'coercive.' Fifth-generation farmer Aaron Lehman called it 'simple' and 'straightforward.' 'No one is forcing us to sign up for farm programs. It's strictly voluntary,' said Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union. 'Protecting our soil and water is reasonable criteria if we're going to receive government assistance.' He has taken about 20 acres out of production on his 50-acre farm to abide by Swampbuster and its sister program Sodbuster, which encourages farmers to take highly erodible land out of agricultural production. Lawyers representing the farmers warn the lawsuit also could threaten Sodbuster and have implications well beyond farm programs. 'The plaintiff is putting forward a very extremist idea that the federal government lacks the authority to make decisions about who it thinks is eligible for taxpayer funding,' said Dani Replogle, an attorney with Food and Water Watch representing the farmers. McCoy agreed that the case could result in new parameters on the government's ability to set eligibility requirements broadly, especially if it reaches higher courts. And he said his team is ready to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not immediately respond to requests for comment. For now, the farmers are most concerned about what could happen to their farms and surrounding communities if wetlands protected under Swampbuster are drained. Lehman worries that if his upstream neighbors destroy their wetlands, his farm will experience erosion, flooding and water pollution. These threats would also trickle down to homeowners. Wetlands in the Upper Midwest have prevented $23 billion per year in residential flood loss costs, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists study. As climate change brings more intense storms, they're anticipated to prevent hundreds of billions of dollars of further flood damage. 'The stakes are huge for farmers, the American public and the environment, but the stakes are nothing for the plaintiff,' said Katie Garvey, an attorney with the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center also representing the farmers. Conlan does not participate in farm programs. He rents his land to farmers and sells it to developers under the limited-liability corporation CTM Holdings. 'Our farms are better off by having these provisions that everyone has to abide by if they want to be in a government program. The fact that someone is challenging this that doesn't have that stake in it is disturbing to me,' Lehman said.
