Groups Ask Court to Vacate Trump Water Rule

Environmental groups have asked a federal court to vacate the Navigable Waters Protection Act enacted during the Trump Administration. The motion for a summary judgment comes as the Biden administration continues to review the existing water rule.

DTN says the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League filed the motion in a South Carolina U.S. District Court. They asked the court to vacate the rule based on what they call undisputed facts, including what they say has been lost protection for U.S. waters.

In its motion, the Coastal Conservation League says the Army Corps of Engineers has been “flooded” with requests to get approved jurisdictional determinations securing the right to “pollute or fill newly excluded streams and wetlands free of the Clean Water Act’s permitting regulations.” They said in the past year that the law has been in effect, the rule’s threat to the nation’s waters has already been profound.

However, agriculture groups support the current rule because they say it simplifies questions about the Clean Water Act jurisdiction that farmers face on their land. The groups call the Trump-era rule an “arbitrary policy reversal” that removed the Clean Water Act’s protections for millions of miles of streams and tens of millions of wetland acres.

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