It's a classic case of government overreach: Congress passes a law, bureaucrats expand the scope of the law to increase their own power, and Congress does nothing.
That's what got California farmer Jack LaPlant in trouble, according to a recent report from The Daily Signal.
LaPlant is being prosecuted for violating the Clean Water Act after the Environmental Protection Agency determined that the soil he had tilled on his property in 2011 counted as "pollution."
At the time, he did his best to understand the environmental regulations that might apply to his fields, but no one told him to speak with the Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the Clean Water Act.
“All of these government officials I spoke with, and they have all been deposed, they never once suggested that I should go meet with the Army Corps of Engineers,” LaPant said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.
“I asked them if it was OK to take this piece of land and grow wheat and they all said it was OK,” he recalled. “Even today, you can go into these offices and they will not tell a farmer that he needs to go and see the Army Corps to farm on his own land. It makes no sense and the Department of Agriculture doesn’t understand any of it, and we are talking about the same federal government.”
LaPant recalls visiting “four different government folks” with expertise in soil conservation when he was researching the history of the farm.
“They all gave me the same answer,” LaPant said. “They told me, ‘Jack, if you’d like to go ahead and plant it the same way it’s been planted in the past, go ahead. But if you want to go in and plant a permanent crop, then maybe we’ll go back and study it.’ So, I went ahead and planted 900 acres of wheat.”
LaPlant believes that the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have expanded the normal understanding of the Clean Water Act to encompass activities Congress never had in mind.
“There’s a pretty broad, clear statement in the Clean Water Act that you don’t need a permit for normal farming activities,” Tony Francois, a lawyer who specializes in property rights, told The Daily Signal.
He added:
This would include normal ranching, farming, forestry activities. But the Army has added multiple conditions that you have to meet for these protections [for such operations] to continue.
One of these conditions is that the property has to be tilled pretty regularly for this protection to continue. But there are many reasons why a farmer may suspend tilling. For example, cattle may have a higher price than wheat or corn, and so the land might be used for grazing for a period of time.
The Army has definitely added hurdles and obstacles to a pretty clear and simple statement of the Clean Water Act that you don’t need a permit for normal farming activities. In our view, what they’ve done is to change the policy decision Congress made.
This is precisely the kind of federal overreach a Convention of States could help to end. Non-elected bureaucrats in D.C. expand their power by "interpreting" laws passed by Congress, circumventing the will of We the People and exerting more control over our daily lives.
A Convention of States could propose constitutional amendments that effectively limit the power of these agencies -- and eliminate some of them altogether.
These amendments could clarify that the federal government can only legislate on issues expressly mentioned in the Constitution. A Convention of States could revert much of that decision-making authority back to the states, where the people have a louder voice and greater influence.
No farmer should have to worry about federal bureaucrats dictating how he farms his own land. If we hold a Convention of States, they may never have to worry about that again.
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