Well more than half the wetlands in the United States are threatened by the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision, an EPA water official said on a webinar Wednesday.
“It is clear that the Supreme Court decision erodes longstanding clean water protections,” said Rose Kwok, an environmental scientist in the Office of Water.
EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers plan to hold listening sessions this fall to discuss how to implement the Sackett decision. The agencies issued a rule Aug. 29 to comply with the court’s decision, which weakened protections for “adjacent wetlands” and removed the “significant nexus” test.
Kwok also said 1.2 million to 4.9 million miles of ephemeral streams are threatened by the decision.