A federal court on Tuesday invalidated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers’ 2015 expansion of federal jurisdiction over small and isolated waters. After years of litigation in suits filed by dozens of state governments and trade groups, this is the first court to reach a final decision on the lawfulness of the 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Several court decisions have preliminarily blocked the rule in many states while the litigation progressed.
The U.S. Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that the agencies violated basic requirements of fair process when they concluded the 2015 rulemaking without first releasing for comment a key report that was the basis for many of their most controversial decisions.
The order came in response to suits by a group of 17 private-sector plaintiffs that included the American Farm Bureau Federation and a broad coalition of business and industry organizations as well as the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The groups challenged the 2015 WOTUS rule as unlawfully expanding federal jurisdiction at the expense of state and municipal authority and offending basic rules of fair process. Having found the rule unlawful for procedural violations, the court did not consider the various other statutory and constitutional challenges.
AFBF General Counsel Ellen Steen praised the court’s decision. “This decision provides strong vindication for what many of us have said for years—the waters of the U.S. rule was invalid. It is time for the agencies to move on to a legally sound basis for determining federal jurisdiction over waters.”
Several other legal challenges to the 2015 rule remain pending in federal courts across the country. Under the Trump administration, EPA and the Corps of Engineers have proposed to repeal the rule and issue a new regulation that appropriately defines federal waters.
I do not agree that the WOTUS rule was invalid, nor that overturning its rulings is a good thing. Water (like other substances) rolls downhill, along with everything in that water. When an upstream landowner dumps any substance into his/her water, that substance is shared with everyone downstream. Frankly, I think the court’s decision is shameful.
The old WOTUS rule was not about clean water, but control – of every foot of ground in America. Of course, all this casual dumping you refer to, is not the norm and there of plenty of rules to deal with unlawful pollution. WOTUS 15 was punitive, arbitrary and according to some, compliance was nearly impossible. There is a new WOTUS rule, plenty tough. It hardly means there won’t be any regulation. The old rule applied to ground that was rarely wet. All of it. It is now possible to move forward with reasonable and responsible environmental regulation without strangling the life out of agriculture.
Our rock has a wonderful washing machine, what it misses and what’s passed along, depending on the composition of earth above your aquifer, often still requires some filtration, which are dependent on your end goals. I am thankful for those who care about the level of cleaning this rock provides and that humankind should respect the quality of our natural resources. Thankfully the US courts get things right, much of the time. If only as much inertia were spent making things better as are used to right the wrongs created by those who haven’t a clue what they have done. In the end, the answer will always lie with maintaining a cap on what humans create, rather than what we destroy. Adding too many people to this rock will always mean a larger problem, by maintaining a handle on our populations growth throttle, we’ll have an easier time being more responsible with the resources at our disposal.
God bless, Texas for this awesome decision. WOTUS, was nothing more than a land grab with the intentions to take control away from the people and handing it over to the government. Ranchers and Farmers love and respect the land and do a much better job than the government, ever will.
Texan’s sure don’t want the mess that has happen in other states, turning private property into a public restrooms. WOTUS was trying to sell, to the public as protecting the environment and would end up destroying the very thing they claim to protect and of course and handing us the tax bill, for never ending clean up.