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CA Farmers to Pay Settlement For Violating WOTUS
USAgNet - 08/17/2017

President Trump has sought to help farmers by rolling back the Obama administration's hotly contested Waters of the United States rule, but it didn't happen soon enough to help John Duarte. The farmer from California's Central Valley agreed Tuesday to a settlement with the Justice Department that will have him pay $330,000 in civil penalties and purchase $770,000 in vernal pool mitigation credits for violating the water rule by plowing his wheat field in 2012.

According to the Washington Times, the alternative was to roll the dice in court and risk a fine of as much as $45 million, which would have devastated his family business, Duarte Nursery, located near Modesto.

The agreement brings to a close the long-running case that became a rallying cry in rural America against what critics have decried as the Clean Water Act's regulatory overreach.

Duarte bought the 450-acre plot in Tehama County to grow wheat, but the Army Corps of Engineers ruled in 2013 that the pools running alongside the furrows were navigable waters under the Waters of the U.S., codified by the Obama administration in 2015.

The Corps. said he should have obtained a permit first and accused him of ripping federally protected wetlands. Duarte sued the Corps., but a federal judge ruled against him in June 2016.

Under the consent decree, Duarte admitted no liability but must 'smooth all disturbed soil surfaces and reasonably match the pre-November 2012 grade and hydrology within impacted waters of the United States on the site,' which is about 22 acres.

In a statement, the Justice Department said that the decree "allows Duarte to return the vast majority of the site to productive use and allows him to seek future determinations concerning jurisdictional waters at the site."


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