New WOTUS rule needed

GUEBERT, from pg. 3 liminary injunction against the rule’s implementation in one of the three cases. That ruling, however, applies to just two states, not the entire nation.

So, yeah, complicated.

But an even bigger court challenge, one that Rollins calls a “ticking time bomb”, is hanging fire in the U.S. Supreme Court. That case, known as Sackett v EPA, was heard last October by the court and reexamines a narrow, 2006 court decision now used by EPA and the Corps to determine what is — and, equally important to farmers and ranchers, what isn’t — a “navigable waters” under WOTUS.

“This isn’t a challenge to the new [Biden] rule,” says the NALC attorney, but “it’s very likely that this ruling,” when announced, “is going to have a huge impact” on it. Huge, as in–again–toss WOTUS on the farm scrap pile.

All might be averted if, after 51 years, Congress accepts its responsibility to write a WOTUS rule to, as Zippy hopes, “protect our natural resources, operate with certainty, and create jobs in their communities.”

And not just lawsuits, that is.

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