On July 24, 2012 from 12-1 Eastern, the National Agricultural Law Center, a unit of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, will provide a free webinar titled, “The Clean Water Act, EPA Regulation, and the Future of Farming.”  Full details, including sign-on instructions are available on the Center website here.  The presentation will focus on Gulf Restoration Network, et al. v. Jackson, et al., a lawsuit filed to force the Environmental Protection Agency to establish numeric nutrient criteria in the Mississippi River Basin.

Gulf Restoration was filed on March 13, 2012 by Sierra Club and other groups against the EPA.  The outcome of the case is significant for many stakeholders, specifically including farmers, municipalities, and others that operate in throughout the Mississippi River Basin and beyond.  In May of 2012, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, more than a dozen state farm bureaus, and other agricultural advocacy organizations filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit.  For a news item about the lawsuit and subsequent motions to intervene, click here.

The webinar is provided as part of a legal education series made by possible by a private gift provided by the Banks Law Firm, PLLC, a Little Rock, Arkansas-based firm that represents agricultural producers.  The gift was provided to support the educational series and to help publicize the 25th Anniversary of the National Agricultural Law Center, the nation’s leading source of agricultural and food law research and information.

While the webinar will focus on the Gulf Restoration Network case and its importance to farmers and others in the Mississippi River Basin and beyond, it will also briefly touch on related recent issues such as EPA fly overs.

For questions regarding the webinar, please contact Center Director Harrison Pittman at hmpittm@uark.edu.

This article originally posted on July 11, 2012 and updated July 21.