Myths, Realities, and the Clean Water Rule Controversy
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen.
Last Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order directing EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to begin work on a new rule defining the scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. The rule, if and when it is finalized, would replace the "Clean Water Rule" released by EPA and the Corps during the summer of 2015. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding the Clean Water Rule has suggested that the 2015 rule was responsible for massive economic impacts and that removing it will be a source of economic relief. President Trump's own remarks, for example, were riddled with such complaints. But for several years, I've been researching the implementation of federal stream and wetland protections (the results of those inquiries appear in just-published articles here and here and in an earlier article here). The truth, I've learned, bears little resemblance to President Trump's claims.
In fact, the 2015 rule has had hardly any impact. That's partly because the Sixth Circuit stayed implementation of the rule not long after it was enacted. But even if the rule had remained in force, its primary consequences would …
Editor's note: This post was originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog on November 10. While it was primarily written for environmental law students, it contains wisdom for everyone who cares about our environment and our natural heritage.
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"As a future environmental attorney, I'm confused and angry and sad. And as a human being, I'm equally as confused and angry and sad. A lot of us students are trying to process all of this today."
That was the beginning of an email that one of my students sent me yesterday. I think she speaks for a lot of us. So I thought it might be helpful to share a few thoughts, some but not all of them optimistic, about what we face going forward. I should say at the outset that I am writing for the benefit of readers who, like me, think environmental …
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen
Today, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes, Co. The key question in Hawkes was whether a Clean Water Act jurisdictional determination – that is, a determination about whether an area does or does not contain waters subject to federal regulatory jurisdiction – is a final agency action within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act. According to a unanimous court, a jurisdictional determination is indeed final agency action.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Roberts, presents the kind of short, businesslike analysis one typically associates with an uncontroversial case. But then comes Justice Kennedy's concurrence, and it's a doozy. In three paragraphs, Justice Kennedy (joined, perhaps not so surprisingly, by Justices Alito and Thomas) asserts that "the reach and systemic consequences of the Clean Water Act …
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen.
Right now, the United States' second-most-heated environmental controversy—behind only the Clean Power Plan—involves the Clean Water Rule, which seeks to clarify the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. According to its many opponents, the rule is one big power grab. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, according to the standard rhetoric, are unfurling their regulatory tentacles across the landscape like some monstrous kraken, with devastating consequences for key sectors of the American economy.
In a forthcoming article, I argue that this rhetoric is false, and that it also misses a much more interesting true story. The Clean Water Rule is indeed part of a major regulatory transformation, which has extended and transformed regulatory protections for small streams. But the Clean Water Rule is just a small part …
Since Justice Scalia’s passing, the blogosphere has been abuzz with speculation about how the changed composition of the Court will affect environmental law. This post adds a little more to that speculation. My focus is not the Clean Power Plan litigation, which has (justifiably) gathered much of the attention, but instead the litigation over the joint EPA-Army Corps Clean Water Rule. And my prediction is a bit different from most predictions about the Clean Power Plan. Here, I predict, that changes in court composition probably won’t matter much.
Before I explain the reasons for that prediction, a little context may be helpful. The Clean Water Rule (also sometimes referred to as the Waters of the United States Rule (or just WOTUS)) determines the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps and EPA jointly released the rule last summer. Its …
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a nationwide stay of implementation of the new Army Corps/EPA Clean Water Rule. This sounds like a very big deal, and the state plaintiffs who won the stay will no doubt describe this as a major victory. Those proclamations will conceal, however, a few layers of complexity and irony.
The legal basis for the ruling is an administrative law principle known as the logical outgrowth rule. Under this principle, a final rule can be different from a proposed rule, but it still must be a logical outgrowth of that proposed rule; it cannot be something completely new. That principle flows from the basic Administrative Procedure Act requirement for notice and an opportunity to comment. Neither is present when an agency’s final rule does something no one reasonably could have expected, and upon …
Earlier today, a federal district court judge in North Dakota enjoined implementation of the new Clean Water Rule (also known as the Waters of the United States rule). And if ever there was a judicial opinion begging for prompt reversal, this is it. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers put years of effort into that rule, and drew upon an extraordinary number of studies to arrive at their position. The court pretended—among other errors—that all that effort and evidentiary support simply did not exist.
The Clean Water Rule determines the scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. More specifically, it includes within federal jurisdiction any tributary of a navigable-in-fact waterway, and the definition of tributary encompasses any stream—even intermittent or ephemeral ones—so long as that stream has a bed, banks, and an ordinary high water mark. That part of the …
In a blog post yesterday, Todd Aagaard provided a quick summary of yesterday’s Third Circuit decision rejecting the Farm Bureau Federation’s challenge to the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. This is an interesting and important case, and it will take a while to digest. But just based on a preliminary read, a few issues seem particularly interesting and important.
What does TMDL mean? The Third Circuit interpreted section 303(d) in a way that seems to afford EPA—and the states—discretion in determining the content of TMDLs. The Farm Bureau’s core argument was that a TMDL should only specify a daily mass of allowable pollutants, and that anything else—for example, a division of that mass into load and wasteload allocations, or into further subdivisions—exceeded the authority granted under the Clean Water Act. The Third Circuit rejected that argument, instead concluding that “’total maximum …
Perhaps as soon as this week, according to media reports, the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA will release a final "Waters of the United States" rule clarifying the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. Simultaneously, Congress is considering multiple bills that would block the new rule and undo portions of the Clean Water Act. There are many reasons for the opposition, but one key argument is grounded in federalism. According to the Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, chief author of the Senate bill (as quoted in Saturday’s New York Times):
"This rule is not designed to protect the traditional waters of the United States. It is designed to expand the power of Washington bureaucrats."
This is a familiar refrain. Politicians say similar things to oppose all sorts of governmental initiatives, ranging from the Common Core educational standards to the Affordable Care Act …
Last week, E&E News reported a breakdown in talks over EPA’s long- delayed stormwater rule. In 2009, in a settlement with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, EPA promised a new rule by November, 2012. That deadline has long since passed, and apparently EPA and environmental groups are at an impasse in their negotiations over a new timeline.
The causes for the delay, which have been thoroughly covered here, are many, but all they boil down to a central problem: urban stormwater is hard to regulate, and EPA is struggling to figure out how to improve the existing system. There are several key reasons for those challenges.
First, urban stormwater problems generally arise from the combined runoff of very large numbers of properties. That makes an individual permitting approach, which has been quite successful for discharges of industrial and wastewater treatment plant effluent, hard to use; writing permits …
