Brown County Commissioners approved a resolution regarding the EPA Clean Water Act which many Texas counties are adopting in order to protect land owners rights.
According to Lewis Lehman of Farm Bureau Insurance who presented the resolution to commissioners, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) have proposed a new rule to define “waters of the United States” that will vastly expand the jurisdictional authority of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) in order to develop a new guidance which expands their own jurisdictional authority under the CWA to include waters of the state(s) and other waters previously not regulated under either the CWA or judicial proclamation, including some ditches, farm ponds, dry water ways and isolated wetlands.
According to the proclamation, this proposed rule (if adopted) will infringe upon the sovereignty of states to appropriately regulate waters of the states. It would require counties and special districts to obtain costly and burdensome Section 404 permits from the USACE for the construction of small bridges and culverts, and routine maintenance of some ditches, canals and other such water conveyances, the resolution states. It would also infringe on private property rights, impairing land management activities such as urban development and agriculture production, the resolution further states.
The resolution stated that legislation to expand the jurisdictional authority of the CWA as described in the proposed rule has failed in the U.S. Senate and the USEPA and USACE have been criticized by both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives for enacting expansive rules without congressional oversight.
By approving this resolution, Brown County joins other Texas counties in “strongly opposing the proposed new rule to define ‘waters of the United States’ in that it increases the need for burdensome and costly permitting requirements, infringes on private property rights and circumvents the legislative process, thus the will of the people.” It also states that, “Congress, not federal agencies, make the laws and therefore any such change in jurisdictional power of the federal government should only occur as a result of the passage of federal legislation.”
In other matters on Monday’s agenda:
*Commissioners took no action after consideration of a burn ban.
*Brown County Clerk Sharon Ferguson received approval for a lease of copiers for use in the County Clerk’s office. According to Ferguson, a previous 5-year lease of two Xerox copiers has expired and 2 Cannon copiers along with a Lexmark printer will be leased from local Cannon Dealer Kirbo’s Office System. The lease will be more expensive, increasing from $412/month to $499/month; however the leases differ in that there is an additional printer to be used for documents and the clerk’s office is not locked into a 5-year lease, according to Ferguson. The funding for the lease will continue to come from the clerk’s records management fund, Ferguson stated.
*Commissioners held a public hearing on the proposed tax rate which will be unchanged from last year at a total combined tax of $0.5744/$100 valuation. This amount is made up of amounts of $0.4476 (up from $0.4451 in 2013/14) general fund, $0.0467 from debt service fund (down from $0.0492 in 2013/14); $0.0801 road and flood fund. Regarding the proposed tax rate County Surveyor Don King stated, “I applaud you for keeping the same rate.” A second public hearing on the proposed tax rate will be held on Friday, September 12, 2014.
