Sid Miller is a Republican candidate for Texas Agriculture Commissioner

At the same time Barack Obama is rightfully criticizing Vladimir Putin for his outrageous and unlawful land grabs in Crimea, he is presiding over an equally outrageous and unlawful land and water grab right here at home.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency–dominated by a group of out-of-touch metal desk bureaucrats, aging hippies, and out-of-control radical environmentalist–is ignoring a Supreme Court decision and the precious private property and water rights of Americans and is planning a power grab which will give unfettered federal control of all streams, ditches, arroyos, gullies, dry creeks, playa lakes, wetlands, and any land that has any kind of surface water on it, for any amount of time during the year.

This proposed rule would apply regulations to the United States “intermittent and ephemeral streams and wetlands” that are created any time it rains and are purely temporary bodies of water. Under this ruling there won’t be much that won’t be affected. This would mean many states like Alaska, Louisiana and other high rainfall states, including most of Texas, will be under almost total control of the EPA. 

Currently, as previously ruled by the Supreme Court, the EPA only has jurisdiction over “relatively permanent or continuously flowing and sizeable waters, like oceans, rivers, streams and lakes.” This new rule would create a major sea change and throw the long held tenant of private land and water stewardship out the window.

As a farmer, rancher, former Chair of the Agriculture and Livestock Committee in the Texas House of Representatives and someone who has earned his living off the land, I see this as just the latest example, in a long list of abuses, of the EPA going well beyond its scope of duties. The Obama Administration and the EPA has and continues to ignore Congress and the Supreme Court, and is attempting, one new rule at a time, to have the ability to regulate the entire country. If this rule is adopted, it will open the door to law suits by radical environmental groups, put a stop to oil, gas, and coal exploration, and severely cripple many agriculture enterprises.

Should this rule be implemented it will result in a total erosion of our state’s rights under the tenth amendment, and will give full control to the federal government over all our Nation’s waters. This will cripple our economy, damage the free enterprise system, and cause undue hardship to our farmers, ranchers and private landowners who history shows us are always the best stewards of our land.

This is, without a doubt, a clear over reach by the federal government and is a first class example of why I have stated over and over in my campaign for Texas Agriculture Commissioner that the greatest danger to Texas agriculture and property owners is an out-of-control federal government.

I will be fighting back and encourage every liberty loving American to join me in doing so as well. There will be a 90 day comment period, prior to the rule being adopted. You know that this unfair and constitutionally prohibited taking will have strong support from leftist environmental groups, selfish personal injury trial lawyers, as well as the mainstream media. Please join me in this important fight and submit your comments as soon as possible to the EPA when it opens up the comment period. You may comment at http://www2.epa.gov/uswaters or send them to me at www.MillerforTexas.com and I will forward them on your behalf to the EPA and to our state’s congressional leaders. We cannot let Barack Obama and the EPA win this battle. Working and standing together we can stop them.

Sid Miller

The views expressed in this letter are not reflective of Breitbart Texas or Breitbart News Network.

Both the Sid Miller and Tommy Merritt campaigns were invited to submit opinion articles to Breitbart Texas.

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