EPA Strikes Another Blow to Wetlands Protections, Risking Water Quality Across US

In response to hundreds of thousands of public comments on their previous proposal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed new revisions to the term "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) that would further erode clean water safeguards and endanger wetlands and streams across the country by narrowing which waters are protected under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

The Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA failed to heed the best available science when it stripped federal protections for millions of acres of wetlands and streams, significantly weakening the Clean Water Act. Today, the EPA under President Donald Trump has once again proposed rules that further endanger these vital bodies of water by arbitrarily limiting which waters are covered by the Clean Water Act. This latest move continues the Trump administration's efforts to prioritize the interests of industry polluters over scientific evidence.

Below is a statement by Dr. Stacy Woods, research director for the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"This is another reckless attack on a crucial shared resource, our nation's waters. Rather than following the science, the EPA appears determined to find new ways to deny Clean Water Act protections to even more wetlands and streams. Each new proposal creates another pathway for these critical waters to fall through the cracks.

"Wetlands and streams are connected to and influence downstream waterways, often in ways we cannot see. Water does not stop moving through a watershed simply because a stream or wetland fails to satisfy a bureaucratic definition of 'permanent.' The EPA's newest proposed tests to determine whether waterways qualify for Clean Water Act protections are arbitrary and go against decades of scientific evidence.

"What's more, the EPA wants to define 'permanent waters' based on 'ordinary conditions.' But what is 'ordinary' in an era of worsening droughts, more intense rain events and a changing climate?

"By attempting to further narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has put vulnerable wetlands at risk of degradation and threatened the health of rivers and streams that communities across the country rely on every day for safe drinking water. Rolling back federal protections for wetlands also ignores the critical role wetlands play in reducing flood damage to homes, farms and communities. In the Upper Midwest alone, 30 million acres of wetlands provide nearly $23 billion in residential flood protection each year. At a time when climate change is contributing to more frequent and severe flooding, weakening these federal safeguards is costly, shortsighted and dangerous."

You can read the comments that Dr. Woods submitted to the EPA when changes to "waters of the United States" were first proposed here and her testimony at an EPA listening session here.