The Environmental Protection Agency removed federal protections for a majority of the country’s wetlands on Tuesday to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
    26·
    1 year ago

    Here’s the actual SCOTUS decision for anyone interested: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf

    As far as I can tell, they’re basically altering jurisdictional protections of certain bodies of water under the 1972 Clean Water Act. It was said before that wetlands were federally protected as long as the wetlands had a continuous surface connection to a stream, river, lake, or ocean (aka an ecologically significant nexus), and were therefore considered “Waters of the United States” under federal protection through the EPA. As it sits now, it seems that states are responsible for determining how to protect a body of water that doesn’t fall under the federal classification.

    This all started because so yahoo in Idaho bought land to build a house, and started filling dirt in the wetlands but was stopped by the EPA. He argued that no, it’s his property, and the waters aren’t protected. SCOTUS agreed with yahoo. This ain’t good.