The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule Wednesday that allows the agency to sidestep any sticky legal issues associated with the Trump administration’s desire to nix an Obama-era rule regulating waterways.
The agency slapped an applicability date on the 2015 Clean Water Rule, a regulation passed during former President Barack Obama’s final term that many conservatives believe is a tyrannical power grab. The ruling gives the EPA another two years to determine what to do about the so-called Waters of the United States regulation (WOTUS).
“The 2015 WOTUS rule developed by the Obama administration will not be applicable for the next two years, while we work through the process of providing long-term regulatory certainty across all 50 states about what waters are subject to federal regulation,” EPA Chief Scott Pruitt said Wednesday in a press statement.
He painted it as an effective way to help reduce confusion for farmers and ranchers who must determine which waterways fall under federal purview and those that are tethered to local and state governments. President Donald Trump wrote an executive order last year directing the EPA to rewrite the rule.
The EPA began its repeal of WOTUS in July to reconstruct the rule in a manner consistent with former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in the 2006 Rapanos v. U.S. case. The now-deceased jurist decided that Obama’s regulation was vague and affected nearly every waterway in the country.
The Obama administration argued the WOTUS rule was necessary to protect water quality and end the confusion over jurisdiction in the wake of two Supreme Court cases. Environmentalists echoed that view.
Trump argued that challenges to the ruling should be heard in an appeals court, but the Supreme Court decided earlier this month that federal district courts should hear the issue. Justices rebuffed arguments by the administration that a federal appeals court should instead hear the litigation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the unanimous decision for the court.
The EPA’s Wednesday decision allows the administration to skirt the court’s ruling.
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