If you've been anxious about your farm dust, sorry, but it's still, er, up in he air. The House yesterday approved legislation aimed at curbing "EPA overreach" by forbidding the agency to issue any new rule governing "coarse particulate matter," or "nuisance dust." But the Senate is not likely to consider the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, and President Obama has said he would veto it anyway. This is interesting:
A statement from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson earlier this year that the agency now has no plans to issue any such rule did not deter Republicans from pushing ahead with the bill, which they said would create certainty that no rule would come out.
"Despite Administrator Jackson's statement, there is nothing currently on the books preventing the EPA from adopting a stricter regulation," Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) said. "This legislation provides iron-clad certainty to farmers, ranchers, small business owners that farm dust would stay off the EPA's to-do list for at least another year."
Democrats said the bill is unnecessary, given Jackson's assurance that there is no need to fear a rule.
Actually, it's kind of refreshing that at least one house of Congress takes its duty to legislate seriously, and I think that's a position that can be supported no matter what you think of farm dust one way for the other. The regulatory state has grown in large part because Congress created too many agencies that it then let write their own rules and regulations, resulting in executive-legislative hybrid monsters not really answerable to anybody. Ut's nice that Lisa Jackon "now has no plans to issue" any such rule, but the point is that she can in the absence of a legislative prohibition.
