Federal Lawsuit aims to abolish Swampbuster February 4 webinar

In this video,  attorney Katie Garvey from the Environmental Law and Policy Center and Elle Gadient, Delaware County Farmer & Iowa Farmers Union Beginning Farmer Representative discuss a federal lawsuit aimed at abolishing Swampbuster provisions that protect wetlands on agricultural lands.   Swampbuster is a last bulwark of protection remaining after the Sackett decision gutted wetland protections in the Clean Water Act.    This program was hosted by Mary Ellen Miller, Chair of LWV Upper Mississippi River River Region.

The Chicago Tribune reported on Jan 15 2025: 
" ... a federal lawsuit brought before a district court in Iowa by a Chicago investor and two libertarian law firms based in Texas and California (CTM Holdings, LLC v. U.S. Department of Agriculture) in April aims to abolish Swampbuster. It’s one of the federal government’s last mechanisms to safeguard wetlands, whose protections have been severely curtailed over the last decade by the first Trump administration and conservative Supreme Court justices just as climate change makes them more necessary.​

What is Swampbuster? 
Swampbuster is a conservation compliance provision that was introduced in the 1985 Farm Bill as part of the Wetland Conservation Compliance Provisions, to discourage the production of agricultural commodities on converted wetlands. It states that people who convert wetlands to allow production of agricultural commodities will be ineligible for USDA benefits until the functions of the converted wetlands are mitigated or restored. 
From the NRCS publication, Wetlands and Conservation Compliance, 2011

Thirty million acres of unprotected wetlands in the upper Midwest, including over 640,000 in Iowa and 1 million in Illinois, are at risk of being destroyed, according to a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. These same wetlands provide nearly $23 billion in annual flood mitigation benefits and have the potential to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of mitigation benefits as climate change increases precipitation across the region."

The Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Environmental Council, Dakota Rural Action, and Food & Water Watch were approved to intervene in this federal lawsuit in Iowa District Court.  Read more about this here.  

Retired Chicago lawyer James Conlan, owner of the 71-acre Iowa farm property seen here, has sued to overturn a voluntary federal wetland conservation program called Swampbuster. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Our speakers were Katie Garvey, Staff Attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, and Elle Gadient, Delaware County Farmer & Iowa Farmers Union Beginning Farmer Representative.  Katie is  representing members of the Iowa Farmers Union who formally entered the case as intervenors earlier this month. It marks the first time farmers directly implicated in the lawsuit will be involved.   Elle and her husband, Steve Besler, are two of those farmers.   

​In our video, you will hear about the case, their views of the merits of the case and what's at stake if the law is abolished.   Katie discusses how the Swampbuster lawsuit threatens federal wetlands protection as well as the foundations of American farm policy, and Elle followed up with her experience as a first-time farmer trying to get a foothold in a landscape where corporate farms dominate.   Elle believes that  "Iowa farmland should be owned and managed by Iowa farmers and that our farmland and watersheds need to be protected for the future, for Iowans, for the environment, and for those downstream from us. These small streams and local watersheds eventually flow into the Mississippi River."

                   Katie Garvey (photo ELPC)                                          Besler-Gadient farm (photo Chicago Tribune)                                  Elle Gadient (photo Forbes)

Katie Garvey
Katie Garvey is a Staff Attorney in ELPC’s Chicago office. She works to keep the Midwest’s waters clean and safe, including from agricultural runoff. During law school, Katie interned for Judge Lawrence M. McKenna for the South District of New York, as well as for Food and Water Watch, and she served as the Membership Editor for the Northwestern University Law Review. Before joining ELPC, Katie was a litigator at the Sidley Austin law firm handling complex cases and enforcement actions in federal and state courts around the country. There, she was awarded the Morsch Award and the Northern District of Illinois’ Award for Excellence in Pro Bono Service for her work in prisoners’ and immigration rights.

Elle Gadient
Elle grew up on her family’s diversified farm in eastern Iowa and is the fifth generation in her family to farm in the Midwest. She graduated from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa with majors in environmental science and business administration.

​In addition to farming with her husband, Elle is dedicated to supporting family farmers and rural America. She was included on Forbes’ 2023 prestigious 30 Under 30 list, recognizing her leadership to “redefine the way we eat, drink and think about consumption.”  

Besler-Gadient Farm (photo Elle Gadient)