24 Republican-Led States Sue the EPA to Overturn a Water Protection Rule

A group of 24 Republican-led states has filed a lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency a rule that decides which bodies of water receive federal protection. The legal action was filed in a Federal Court in Northh Dakota This Thursday.

The rule the group complains about is the result of decades Efforts to define the federal government’s powers in regulating bodies of water in the United States under the Clean Water Act. Back in 2014, President Barack Obama proposed a rule that revised the definition of WOTUS, or the “waters of the United States,” protected under the Clean Water Act 1972. It passed in 2015.

But in 2020, the Trump administration did it drain the clean water regulations. The ObamaEra Rule was superseded by the Navigable Waters Protections Rule, which weakened the EPA’s permitting process for large corporations. In 2022, President Biden enacted new pollution control measures that include protections for seasonal streams and waterways. Republican leaders across the country protested the new regulations and her lawsuit is working to halt Biden’s rule before it goes into effect March, accordingly Reuters.

Patrick Morrisey, Attorney General of West Virginia called during a press conference Thursday that The Biden administration’s protection would particularly hurt miners, ranchers, farmers and landowners across the country when land is privately owned contain small bodies of water that could be regulated by the federal government under Biden’s ruling.

“You can’t regulate a puddle like you can regulate a river and this will never give us cleaner water, which is what we all want,” Morrisey said, according to the West Virginia Record. “This rule would hurt jobs and economic growth by stripping states of jurisdiction and asserting federal sovereignty over nearly every body of water, including ditches, ephemeral streams and many other areas where water may only flow once every 100 years.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen argues so the verdict is unconstitutional. “The EPA has grossly exceeded its authority in attempting to claim jurisdiction over land and water not associated with navigable waters,” he said in a statement.

The states affected by the lawsuit are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee , Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.