Under the guise of the Clean Water Act, headstrong federal ecocrats want the authority to regulate every cranberry bog, duck pond, and mud puddle in America. Regulating the country’s “navigable waters” just isn’t enough for them. A tug of war over the appropriate reach of their regulatory authority has intensified since the 2006 Rapanos ruling. In Rapanos, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a fractured decision, indicated that not every wet or damp spot in America fell under federal authority—delivering a hand slap that the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers didn’t appreciate.
Years later, then-President Barack Obama took aggressive steps to claw back the regulatory reach Washington seemed in danger of losing, resulting in the 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule, or WOTUS. This rule was so vast in scope that it alarmed states, agricultural interests, and property- and water rights advocates, triggering legal challenges. Obama’s rule was blocked by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and was never implemented nationwide. The Trump administration attempted a scaled-back version of the rule, but it, too, was blocked in court—prolonging a period of crippling regulatory uncertainty that impacts millions of Americans and continues to this day.
It’s time to resolve these ambiguities and adopt a reasonable definition of “waters” that’s consistent with the limited government precepts enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. These comments were offered by MSLF with that in mind.
