Sen. John Thune (R-SD) was named one of the Legislators of the Year this week by the Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) and he spent some time with organization leaders on Tuesday talking about industry priorities.

One priority for all of agriculture is the EPA’s Waters of the United States or WOTUS, which was the subject of a disapproval resolution passed by Congress but vetoed by the president last month. The Senate failed to override that veto and Sen. Thune says the fight will continue.

“The administration’s very intent on regulating everything from the ditches and ponds and puddles to any water in this country which we think is just a tremendous overreach … so we’re going to everything we can to battle it,” said Thune during an interview with AgWired. “I know it’s being litigated in the courts and hopefully we’ll be able get this thing stalled out until we get a new administration, in which case I hope we’ll be able to reverse it.”

Listen to Thune’s comments here: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/ara-winter-16-thune-wotus.mp3″ text=”Sen. Thune comments on WOTUS fight”]