Article

A coalition of 11 agriculture groups, including Ohio Farm Bureau, has filed a Motion to Intervene in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that began earlier this year by the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), the Board of Lucas County Commissioners and the City of Toledo. With this action, the agricultural organizations are rising to the defense of Ohio farmers, who have long been a legal target of the ELPC, an anti-agriculture activist group.

Ohio agriculture is being represented in this intervention filing by Ohio Cattlemen’s Association, Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association, Ohio Dairy Producers Association, Ohio Farm Bureau, Ohio Pork Council, Ohio Poultry Association, Ohio Soybean Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Corn Growers Association, National Pork Producers Council and United Egg Producers.

In the lawsuit, baseless claims by ELPC allege that the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) of nutrients such as phosphorus into the Western Lake Erie Basin, set by the EPA, is insufficient to meet both Ohio and federal water quality standards.

“This lawsuit is nothing more than an unjustified push for more restrictive regulations for Ohio farmers, based on a radical agenda against agriculture and not on science and common sense,” said Adam Sharp, executive vice president of Ohio Farm Bureau. “At the heart of our united action to intervene in this case is to give Ohio agriculture a voice against the blatant lies, meritless attacks and frivolous lawsuits that aim to satisfy an agenda against farmers that goes far beyond water quality. Those attacks have to be put to a stop.”

While the groups filing the lawsuit allege that farmers are doing nothing for water quality, thousands of farmers have enrolled millions of acres in the Lake Erie watershed in Ohio’s H2Ohio water quality program, as well as other federal voluntary, science-based programs to do their part and more for clean water. The results are clear, according to the National Center for Water Quality Research, which reports seeing a distinct downward trend in dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), the main fuel for algal blooms, over the last five years.

Despite that progress and the new TMDL now in place for the Western Lake Erie Basin, the Ohio agriculture community has said for years that whatever came from these new EPA rules would not satisfy some organizations and government officials that want to regulate all of Ohio agriculture into non-existence.

The lawsuit against EPA was filed by ELPC on May 1, and the federal government filed an answer to the litigation July 29. The coalition of Ohio agriculture groups filed a Motion to Intervene Sept. 20.