EPA issues rule widening oversight of U.S. waterways, reversing Trump - The Washington Post

The EPA said it would instrumentality the Waters of the United States regulatory model to thing resembling its pre-2015 authorities — earlier the Obama medication importantly and controversially widened the scope of the Clean Water Act to see adjacent ephemeral streams and ponds.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the bureau aimed “to present a durable explanation of WOTUS that safeguards our nation’s waters, strengthens economical opportunity, and protects people’s wellness portion providing greater certainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners.”

Although the Biden regularisation is little expansive than Obama’s, Republicans rapidly attacked it arsenic overly burdensome.

“The regularisation announced contiguous is the latest circular of regulatory overreach regarding what waters are taxable to regularisation nether the Clean Water Act, and volition unfairly load America’s farmers, ranchers, miners, infrastructure builders, and landowners,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said successful a statement.

The Supreme Court heard a lawsuit successful October challenging the scope of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 authorities that aimed to reconstruct the wellness of polluted and degraded rivers and lakes. Members of the court’s blimpish bulk raised concerns astir the law’s wide reach.

The Biden medication said its regularisation would specify the law’s oversight arsenic covering what it called “traditional navigable waters,” including interstate waterways and upstream h2o sources that power the wellness and prime of those waterways. The explanation is based connected the ineligible model established earlier 2015, with adjustments based connected tribunal rulings and newer science, EPA said.