The Trump administration is moving to narrow federal definitions of the nation’s waters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Nov. 17 — a change that would likely exclude many waterways and a vast majority of Kentucky's vital, dwindling wetlands from protections.
The proposed changes come after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a broader interpretation of the Clean Water Act in 2023, in Sackett v. EPA. Kentucky waterway advocates at the time called the ruling “calamitous,” and feared it would presage a broader erosion of environmental protections.
The EPA, under President Donald Trump, is now looking to set a new definition of “waters of the U.S.,” known colloquially as WOTUS. These rules are meant to delineate which water bodies receive protections under the Clean Water Act and which do not.
The newly proposed definition would leave tens of millions of acres of U.S. wetlands, and likely most of Kentucky’s, without Clean Water Act protections by requiring waters to be “standing or continuously flowing year-round or at least during the wet season.”
Countless smaller waterways could also be cut out of protections, even if they ultimately drain to larger, protected bodies of water. ...
Nick Hart, policy director for the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, said the new rules create “a right to pollute” for industry to take advantage of, and go further in eroding protections than was needed to comply with the Supreme Court's 2023 decision.
“Based on this rule,” Hart said, “it is going to be harder for Kentucky to reach what we would think of as drinkable, swimmable, fishable water.”
Read the rest at the Courier-Journal.
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