Congressional Hearing Exposes Lack of Clarity on WOTUS Rules

Demonstrating to members of Congress how hard it is to get to know the new federal rules for enforcing Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation's government affairs team on Wednesday showed lawmakers 1,128 pages of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was largely blacked out.

Courtney Briggs, a senior director of government affairs with AFBF and chair of the Waters Advocacy Coalition -- a collection of industry groups -- said agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are largely trying to ignore the 2023 Supreme Court case, Sackett v. EPA. The Sackett case curtailed federal agencies from regulating wetlands as waters of the U.S. unless the wetland is adjacent to a continuous body of water.

Farm Bureau and other business groups have been trying to get clear guidance from EPA and the Corps about how those agencies are implementing the new WOTUS standards set by the Supreme Court.

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