On March 24, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published plans to seek stakeholder input on implementing a new definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The EPA’s goal...more
Garry Lewis owns 2000 acres in Livingston Parish, Louisiana and he has been fighting with the Army Corps of Engineers over whether any of those 2000 acres are wetlands subject to Federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction for over...more
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers recently announced a revised and final rule amending the definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) following the Supreme Court decision in Sackett v....more
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Aug. 29, 2023, issued a final rulemaking revising the definition of "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) within Corps1 and EPA2...more
On May 25, the Supreme Court of the United States significantly narrowed the scope of wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA or Act). The Court held that only wetlands indistinguishable from Waters of the United...more
On May 25, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) made its final decision on a long-running case that will redefine the power and authority that the United States Environmental Protection agency (EPA) will have to...more
The United States District Court (E.D. Louisiana) (“Court”) issued a June 12th Order addressing a property owner’s challenge to the United States Corps of Engineers (“Corps”) assertion of Clean Water Act jurisdiction over...more
The United States Supreme Court decided last week in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency that a word does not mean what the dictionary, Congress, or two federal agencies have for 45 years understood it to mean....more
In a 9-0 ruling published on May 25, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the U.S. EPA’s and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE's) use of the expansive “significant nexus” test to assert authority over adjacent wetlands as...more
The Supreme Court ends protection for most wetlands in the United States... In a sweeping decision, the Supreme Court last week eliminated federal protection for more than half the wetlands in the United States. (Sackett...more
On March 19, 2023, a federal district court in Texas granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the January 2023 Revised Definition of Waters of the United States (2023 WOTUS rule) promulgated by Environmental Protection...more
On January 18, U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a final WOTUS rule that will overlap with a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will define jurisdictional waters under the Clean Water Act....more
On January 18, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) published a final rule (2023 Rule) revising the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) as used in the...more
When you find yourself digging the same hole and getting nowhere, quit digging. At least, that is what rational logic would dictate. On December 30, 2022, the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (collectively,...more
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rulemaking on Jan. 18, 2023, revising the definition of "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) within the Corps1 and...more
Following decades of regulatory actions and lawsuits concerning the definition of “waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act, on December 30, 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army...more
On December 30, 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers announced their finalization of the agencies’ redefinition of the Clean Water Act’s “waters of the United States” phrase,...more
In its upcoming term, the US Supreme Court will once again consider the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), a key term in the Clean Water Act (CWA), and its application to wetlands. The case, Sackett v....more
On January 24th, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Certiorari in Sackett, Michael, et ux. v. EPA, et al. on the limited question of “[w]hether the Ninth Circuit set forth the proper test for determining whether wetlands are...more
On December 11, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the “Corps”) proposed new regulations that would sharply curtail the Corps’ permitting authority under the Clean Water...more
A major skirmish in the long-running legal battle over the scope of protected waters under the federal Clean Water Act (“Act”) has just ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in National Association of Manufacturers v....more
The Clean Water Rule recently issued by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers defines the scope of federal jurisdiction over wetlands and other “waters of the United States.”[1] It’s effective on August 28, 2015, so you need...more