The Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision ruled in favor of two landowners backfilling a lot containing wetlands. The decision changed the definition of the term “waters of the United States”—which is used in the Clean Water Act—to exclude wetlands without continuous surface connections to larger, navigable bodies of water. In November 2025, the Trump administration’s EPA proposed to set new rules for water regulations that may be even looser than the updated Sackett definition.
A recent scientific study found that the new rules will leave an area of wetlands unprotected that cumulatively equals the land area of Wisconsin! This terrible news for clean water, fish and wildlife habitats, and the economic and ecosystem services provided by swamps, marshes, bogs, pocosins, floodplains, and mires.
While the loosened definition might not result in direct dredging and filling of the deepwater swamps that I focus on here, it would allow dredging and filling to encroach ever closer to tupelo-cypress swamps and other wetlands, inflicting numerous adverse impacts.
Sad and tragic.
No comments:
Post a Comment