A California farmer plans to challenge a recent court ruling that he violated the Clean Water Act by tilling through wetlands in his field.

A federal judge has ruled John Duarte of Tehama County, Calif., should have obtained a Clean Water Act permit to run shanks through the wetlands at a depth of four to six inches, creating furrows prior to planting wheat in a 450-acre pasture.

The ruling is significant for other farmers because it undermines the “plowing exemption” to Clean Water Act regulations, said Tony Francois, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group that represents Duarte.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claims the tillage operation on Duarte’s property doesn’t qualify as plowing because it “relocated earthen material into ridges,” unlawfully raising the elevation of the soil in the wetlands with “fill material.”

Under this interpretation, the plowing exemption to the Clean Water Act would essentially be rendered meaningless, said Francois.

“There’s no way you can plow without displacing soil from the track of the plow into a little ridge next to it,” he said.

Duarte has asked U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller to reconsider her ruling, with a hearing on his motion scheduled for July 1 in Sacramento.

If the judge refuses to reconsider the ruling, Duarte will request permission to challenge it before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Francois.

“She didn’t really look at our evidence that all Duarte did was plow,” he said.

In her recent decision, Mueller agreed with the federal government that by moving soil horizontally across the wetland portions of his field, Duarte unlawfully redeposited it into the “waters of the United States” and thereby “discharged a pollutant.”

Duarte didn’t qualify for the plowing exemption because he was converting a pasture that had long been used for grazing to grow wheat, which meant that tillage wasn’t an “established and ongoing” farm activity on the property, according to Mueller.

Such an overly narrow understanding of the Clean Water Act’s plowing exemption has “no basis” in the actual statute, which wasn’t intended to stop farmers from changing what’s grown in fields that include wetlands, said Francois.

Tillage operations would only be prohibited under the Clean Water Act if they were performed for a non-farming use, such as preparing a field for building construction, he said.

The idea that growers must obtain a Clean Water Act permit to switch a field from grazing to growing crops or planting an orchard is based on a misinterpretation of the law by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he said.

“They’re basically saying if you want to deviate from what you’ve been doing, you need our permission,” Francois said.

Duarte’s problems with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began in 2012, when the agency ordered him to “cease and desist” tillage in the field because it contained temporary “vernal pools.”

He filed a lawsuit against the agency claiming it had violated his due process rights — an argument that was rejected by the judge — to which the Corps responded with a counterclaim alleging the Clean Water Act violation.

Because the judge hasn’t yet decided on a punishment for Duarte, the litigation isn’t finished and so he can’t appeal to the 9th Circuit without her permission.

Such an “interlocutory appeal” would be warranted in this case because it has the potential to end the lawsuit without having to go through the “remedies” phase, according to a court document filed by Duarte.