Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley will meet later today with the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an outfit he says is out to “harm American agriculture” with it’s far-reaching policies. Grassley, a Republican, is scheduled to meet with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on “agriculture regulator matters” and Grassley says he’ll be giving McCarthy an earful.

Grassley says, “Almost every town meeting I have, something comes up about the power grabs of EPA and the nonsensical regulations that they’re putting in place, particularly right now.” Rural electric cooperatives generate about 80 percent of their electricity from coal, Grassley says, and rural agriculture is a big user of that energy. “The EPA’s coming out with some anti-coal regulations almost with the philosophy that we’re going to shut down coal,” Grassley says, “maybe not today, maybe not this decade but we’re going to very dramatically encourage not using fossil fuels.”

Grassley also blasts the EPA’s efforts to much more closely regulate rivers and streams across the U.S., including small creeks in which he says you couldn’t even float a canoe. “Now, there’s a lot of other regulations that are going to come up but this meeting has been called, not just by me, but by all Republican members of the Agriculture Committee,” Grassley says, “so agriculture is going to get a lot of attention because EPA is really trying to harm American agriculture.”

Grassley’s meeting with McCarthy in Washington D.C. is scheduled for 3:15 P.M./Central time.