Changing The WOTUS Conversation

There’s been a shift in recent years when it comes to the “Waters of the U.S.” discussions.

“We talked about this during the Biden administration, and we had seen a unanimous Supreme Court decision giving the EPA pretty clear direction on how the agency needed to go about interpreting which water features were federally jurisdictional," said Mary-Thomas Hart, chief counsel for government affairs with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.  "The Biden administration was reluctant, at best, to follow that advice from the Supreme Court. And while we saw the right language put in place, while we saw the regulation, the words on paper be what we wanted, there was a lot of resistance out in the country from staffers who were actually applying those words.”

So, where is the change taking place?

“That's the biggest shift that we've seen in the last year, not only a revised regulatory definition that kind of tries to further narrow down that jurisdictional definition, but really giving explicit guidance to staff out in the country, so that there's a lot less wiggle room," said Thomas Hart.  "Again, the goal for NCBA, the goal for the cattle industry, is to ensure that every landowner, not just an attorney, not just a hydrologist, not just an engineer, can go out, look at the water features on their property, and at least make a preliminary determination about whether a water feature is going to be subject to federal permitting. I think that this administration's proposed rule, as well as the guidance that we've seen go out to staff, gets us a long way down at getting to that end goal.”

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