Will Obama's EPA ditch common sense on forestry water ditches?

Upper Peninsula of Michigan

In his third State of the Union address, President Obama again talked about job-creation. But his radicalized Environmental Protection Agency continues to assault the job creators.

In the Washington Examiner, David Freddoso explains a possible new front in the war on prosperity.

If jobs are on President Obama's mind, he should care about the U.S. logging industry. In 46 of the 50 states, forestry ranks in the top 10 manufacturing industries. It employs about 2.5 million Americans and pays $87 billion in wages annually. Its annual sales are $230 billion, including exports of roughly $35 billion.

Those jobs and that revenue now face a man-made crisis -- more specifically, a Big Green environmentalist-made crisis. Obama's administration could weigh in on either side.

For 35 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has understood silviculture -- the act of harvesting trees, as opposed to processing them -- to be an agricultural activity, not a manufacturing one. The distinction is vital because of particulars in the Clean Water Act. Runoff from "point-source" manufacturing facilities (including saw mills) is closely regulated. Permits are required, and an involved monitoring and remediation process is prescribed.

On the other hand, the "natural runoff" from forest roads -- basically mud puddles that accumulate in ditches -- has never required such permits or monitoring. It is cared for through what is known as "best management practices."

And the EPA just might see an opportunity to attack an industry, logging, that their fellow leftists detest.

Liberals love the courts--they discovered decades ago that it's easier to enact unpopular laws in the courtroom than in the legislature. "[T]the EPA has been misinterpreting its own rules for 35 years, and that, in fact, forest roads must be regulated in similar fashion to factories and power plants," Freddoso writes about how the outlier 9th Circuit Court of Appeals views this dispute. And the Obama EPA might end up concurring.

The expense of the litigation alone could kill the logging industry in the United States. And if the EPA requires permits for these ditches, American forestry could be chopped to pieces.

Forestry jobs pay well.

But for the Obama administration, it's more important to "fundamentally transform America."

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