The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers recently they have halted implementation of the nationwide and are reverting back to a definition of waters of the United States, or WOTUS, established in the 1980s. This announcement comes after a federal district court judge struck down the Trump administration’s final rule defining waters of the United States that are federally regulated under the Clean Water Act.

Under President Trump, EPA and the Corps repealed the ABC-opposed definition of WOTUS issued under President Obama in 2015 and replaced it with the NWPR, which provided four clear categories of waters under the CWA that businesses and landowners could easily understand. However, in her , the judge wrote that allowing the Trump-era regulation to stay in place while the administration works on a new definition of WOTUS could lead to serious environmental harm, but since the Obama-era rule was repealed, the agencies must interpret WOTUS using the pre-2015 definition. Ìý

The definition of WOTUS that is currently being implemented by the agencies can be found on the . Additionally, the agency website includes guidance for implementing this definition of WOTUS following the , and Supreme Court decisions.

EPA and the Corps recently held a series ofÌýÌýto hear from interested stakeholders on their perspectives on defining WOTUS and how to implement that definition as the agencies pursue this process. On Sept. 3, ÀÏÅ£Ó°ÊÓ as a member of the Waters Advocacy Coalition to the agencies on their intent to revise the definition of WOTUS.

ÀÏÅ£Ó°ÊÓwill continue to monitor and provide updates on WOTUS in Newsline.