Partner Duke McCall was a guest on the Talking Under Water podcast where he discussed the US Supreme Court’s May 2023 ruling in Sackett v. EPA and the subsequent revision by the US EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to the definition of “waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act. While the changes exclude a significant number of wetlands in the United States from regulation under the Clean Water Act, Duke noted that this does not necessarily mean there will be a rush to discharge pollutants or fill into these waters.
“It’s also possible that state and/or local regulators will step in and seek to regulate these waters that are no longer subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act,” Duke said. “It is clear that the scope of waters subject to Clean Water [Act] regulation is significantly narrowed, but we don’t yet know what that means in terms of the water quality and environmental health impacts.”