Five Major Issues for EPA and Farmers EPA Administrator Highlights $4 Billion in 'Green Fund' for Rural Communities

by Chris Clayton (DTN Progressive Farmer) EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Friday spotlighted rural investments in new green funds while saying the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET) model update is coming in the "very near future" and efforts to help farmers with agricultural chemicals are hampered by funding restrictions by Congress.

Regan took questions from members of the Society of Environmental Journalists at the group's annual meeting. He is the first EPA administrator to attend the group's meeting in two decades.

EPA on Thursday announced eight community development banks and nonprofits will oversee a $20 billion "green bank" to provide grants to finance local clean-energy projects.

"We know, based on the aid recipients that we've chosen, (and) the metrics that we put in place, we're going to pull hundreds of billions of private capital off the sidelines," Regan said.

Despite clamoring from biofuel groups for the Biden administration to hurry up and complete its update of the GREET life cycle model, Regan did not provide many specifics to DTN's question about when the update will be done and how EPA would apply the new model to the Renewable Fuels Standard. Regan said the update, which was initially expected March 1, would be coming "very soon."

EPA plays a critical role in developing a sustainable aviation fuels market for U.S. ethanol and biodiesel industries, which depends on how EPA ties an updated GREET model to the Renewable Fuels Standard.

"From day one, (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack and I decided to sit down and really look at the relationship between EPA and USDA, and how we could heal some of those relationships and think about how we can use science to tackle some of the common issues that we have. And as we think about the GREET model, and some of the applications of the GREET model, Tom and I decided that there needed to be some updates to that model if we wanted to use that model for some of the future programs that USDA, EPA, Treasury and others were designing," Regan said. "So, USDA and EPA and some of the federal family decided to put some money into updating that model so that its application could be Clean Air Act-compliant. We're going through that process. I feel good about that process because we have all the players at the table. And I think that the timeline that we originally announced has fallen by a couple of weeks, if not a month, but in the near future, the very near future, we'll have that model up and running and applied in the ways that we said it will be applied."

Efforts to work with the agricultural industry to register new pesticides have been hampered by a lack of funding while EPA continues to face litigation over pesticide registrations and a lot of the lawsuits "have not been beneficial to the public," Regan said.

Journalists from the University of Missouri Ag & Water Desk asked Regan about the ineffectiveness of the EPA-led Mississippi River Hypoxia Task Force, which has failed to meet its goals in reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from nonpoint sources.

Pointing to the Supreme Court ruling on waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) regulations last May in the Sackett case, Regan said, "the Supreme Court went further than those who were challenging us in its ruling, which set back that portion of water protection over 50 years."

In the Sackett case, the Supreme Court rolled back national wetlands protections by concluding that "waters of the U.S." only include streams and wetlands that have a continuous surface connection to traditionally navigable waterways.

On the current WOTUS rule, Regan went back to a phrase he likes to use, "We want to measure twice, cut once."

Still, 26 states right now are suing EPA over the new WOTUS rule that came out in September. A group of agricultural organizations has also intervened in the case. The lawsuits in federal courts in both North Dakota and Texas argue EPA's latest rule goes beyond the Supreme Court's waterway definitions in Sackett. READ MORE