The Trump Administration this week announced the release of revised regulations determining which wetlands and other bodies of water qualify as a Water of the United States and are therefore subject to federal permit requirements before construction and other land improvement activities can proceed. The rules will be jointly issued by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers establishing, according to an EPA release, a “durable, common-sense definition of ‘water of the United States’” under the Clean Water Act. The rule seeks to codify the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision which found that “adjacent wetlands” under the law are those wetlands that have a continuous surface connection to bodies already considered "waters of the United States.” The wetlands must be “indistinguishable” from those waters to be considered jurisdictional.
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