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According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Navigable Waters Rule (NWR), issued by the Corps and the EPA, will effectively remove 51% of the Corps’s mapped wetlands from federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Much of that eliminated inventory was subject to federal protection under the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Water […]
As the Supreme Court directed in National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, challenges to the EPA’s Clean Water Rule or waters of the United States (WOTUS) (June 26, 2015, Federal Register (FR)) must be filed in federal district courts rather than in courts of appeal. This has set the stage for dueling opinions […]
Judge David C. Norton of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina upended the Trump administration’s careful plans to eliminate and replace the Obama administration’s Clean Water Rule by issuing an injunction against the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) “Suspension Rule” that delayed the effective date of the Clean Water Rule for 2 […]
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team indicated that E. Scott Pruitt, a Republican and the two-term attorney general (AG) of Oklahoma is Trump’s choice to serve as administrator of the EPA. As AG, Pruitt has fought relentlessly against what he perceives to be federal overreach into the rights of the states and has continually expressed the […]
Industry and many states are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a critical jurisdictional matter related to the Clean Water Rule ((CWR), June 29, 2015, Federal Register (FR) promulgated by the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). More commonly called the waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, the action provided […]
The Senate voted 52 to 40 to override President Obama’s veto of Senate Joint Resolution (S.J. Res.) 22, which was written to prohibit the Agency from implementing its Clean Water Rule. The vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.
After failing the day before to collect the votes needed to approve a bill to force the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers (EPA/Corps) to rewrite their embattled June 29, 2015, Clean Water Rule (also called WOTUS for waters of the United States), Senate opponents of the rule gained the simple majority needed to pass […]
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Court) recently issued a stay nationwide against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) from enforcing the revised definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), also known as the Clean Water Rule.