Back to the Future with “Navigable Waters of the United States”

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of the Army finalized a rule adding an applicability date to the 2015 Rule (that never went into effect) defining “waters of the United States.” But, the 2015 Rule will now not be applicable until two years following publication of the applicability date rule in the Federal Register (scheduled to be this week), giving the agencies the time needed to reconsider the very fluid definition of “waters of the United States.” The 2015 Rule “clarifying” the scope of “waters of the United States” was a politicization of science that would have resulted in tens of millions of new acres of privately owned land being removed from productive use and placed under the jurisdiction of the federal government. For those uninitiated in the moving target clarifying what are “navigable waters of the United States,” defining where those waterways begin and end has…

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