EPA moves to rescind 2015 Waters of the U.S.

"We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation's farmers and businesses," Administrator Scott Pruitt said in an EPA news release.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order directing the EPA to review the rule and recommend either rescinding or revising it, as appropriate. Today’s announcement is the next step in that process.

The proposal to rescind the rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register in the coming days for comment.

Based on several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, EPA’s jurisdiction had included “navigable” waters and waters with a significant connection to navigable waters, according to a news release from the National Pork Producers Council. The WOTUS rule broadened that to include, among other water bodies, upstream waters and intermittent and ephemeral streams. It also covered lands adjacent to such waters.

Agriculture organizations led legal efforts against the rule, filing suit in a U.S. District Court and presenting a brief to a U.S. Court of Appeals. The latter halted implementation of the WOTUS rule shortly after its Aug. 28, 2015, effective date.

“This is great news for America’s pork producers,” NPPC President Ken Maschhoff, a pork producer from Carlyle, Ill., said in the news release. “The WOTUS rule was a dramatic government overreach and an unprecedented expansion of federal authority over private lands.”

“We salute the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers for their efforts. We stand committed to working with these agencies as they develop a new rule that defines jurisdictional boundaries in clear terms that are inclusive of the realities of farming,” Texas farmer Wesley Spurlock, president of the National Corn Growers Association, said in a news release.

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Craig Uden called the move “another great step in the right direction.” Uden said in a news release the proposed repeal follows a common sense approach to environmental policies.

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the organization looked forward to supporting the proposal.

He said in a statement, “Farmers and ranchers across this country are cheering EPA’s proposal today to ditch its flawed Waters of the U.S. rule. … EPA should ditch this rule once and for all, go back to the drawing board, and write a new rule that protects water quality without trampling the rights of businesses and the states.”