Water

Regulatory and legislative disputes over the clean water and safe drinking water acts have major implications for dischargers, utilities and others, and our Water section features the latest news from EPA, the courts and Congress.

Topic Subtitle
Regulatory and legislative disputes over the clean water and safe drinking water acts have major implications for dischargers, utilities and others, and our Water section features the latest news from EPA, the courts and Congress.

April 4 Order

April 18 Judgment

April 18 Order


Petitioners' Complaint

Dispute Resolution Deadlines



Final California Long-Term Water Plan

Proposed Trailer Bill


D.C. Circuit signals interest in rehearing CWA 'blending' case

A federal appeals court has ordered EPA to file a formal response to a municipal wastewater group's bid for rehearing of its suit seeking to limit the agency's Clean Water Act (CWA) authority to regulate “blending” at wastewater treatment plants -- a signal that judges may be seriously considering the rehearing request. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit filed an unsigned order April 18 in Center for Regulatory Reasonableness (CRR) v. EPA , giving the...

Cardin's Strategy To Preserve EPA Budget Seeks To 'Put A Face On The Cuts'

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) says he will seek to preserve EPA's Chesapeake Bay program and other lower-profile programs that face elimination under President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget request by putting “a face on the cut” so that policymakers can see the agency's real-world benefits and limit any funding cuts. “You've got to put a face on the cut, otherwise it becomes much more vulnerable in our political system,” Cardin told Inside EPA April 17 shortly after he...

Water Utilities, Environmentalists Criticize EPA Household Lead Level Plan

EPA's plan to develop a "health-based benchmark" to assess the relationship between drinking water lead levels and blood lead levels in children is drawing criticism from drinking water utilities, some environmentalists and the state of Texas, which each raise varying concerns about whether the effort will succeed in better protecting children from lead risks. The criticisms come in recent public comments filed ahead of an April 5 deadline for input on EPA's draft report, "Proposed Modeling Approaches for a Health-Based...

States Eye Oklahoma Report To Guide Research On Produced Water Reuse

States weighing options for reusing produced water from oil and gas drilling operations are eyeing the imminent release of Oklahoma's study on the practice to inform their own research and regulatory efforts, but environmentalists and industry officials are warning that more research is still needed to assess and mitigate risks from the practice. During an April 6 session of the Environmental Council of the States' (ECOS) Shale Gas Caucus at the council's winter meeting in Washington, D.C., Oklahoma Secretary of...

EPA panel finalizes report on state wetlands regulation

An EPA advisory subcommittee is finalizing its recommendations on how the agency can best clarify when a state or tribe can permit discharges of dredge-and-fill material under the Clean Water Act (CWA) section 404 program ahead of a just-announced May 10 meeting of the full environmental policy committee. The Assumable Water Subcommittee of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT) discussed during an April 17 teleconference final edits to a draft report outlining how states can take...

EPA Plan To Ease CWA Enforcement May Face Hurdles In Circuit Courts

EPA's plan to ease or drop Clean Water Act (CWA) enforcement that used a test by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for determining when waters are subject to the law and shift to a narrower test by the late Justice Antonin Scalia may face hurdles in some federal circuit courts that have already issued rulings upholding Kennedy's test, sources say. The legal barriers could also create uncertainty over EPA's pending effort to overhaul the Obama administration's CWA jurisdiction rule that...

EPA, environmentalists combine stormwater permit suit appeals

EPA and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) are consolidating the environmentalist group's two pending appeals of citizen suits that would force the agency to craft new Clean Water Act (CWA) stormwater permits for industrial and residential sites, setting up a single decision on whether to mandate those permits in at least two states. CLF and the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a joint brief April 14 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit asking the court to...

EPA Water Fund Boost Decried As No Substitute For Steep USDA Cuts

Environmentalists and water utility officials are criticizing a preliminary Trump administration plan to modestly boost funding for EPA's water infrastructure funds in fiscal year 2018 because it is dwarfed by a plan to cut nearly $500 million from a Department of Agriculture (USDA) water and wastewater program. The proposed increase for EPA's water infrastructure funds, one of the few agency programs to have received an increase in the fiscal year 2018 budget request, “is a fake increase,” says one environmentalist...

American Water Works Association Comments

Texas Council On Environmental Quality Comments

Earthjustice Comments

Natural Resources Defense Council Comments



Rapid Pace Of CWA Rule Development Poses Regulatory, Legal Challenges

The Trump administration's aggressive timeline for its forthcoming Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule risks creating problems that could hinder its implementation or leave it vulnerable to lawsuits, such as rushing EPA's response to public comments or inadequately justifying the regulatory and scientific basis for the rule, sources say. Administration officials are pushing to "move quickly" to craft a new CWA rule , Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Benita Best-Wong told Inside EPA in a recent interview,...

Letter To Appropriators

North Dakota Letter

Kentucky Letter


EPA said to plan two-step process to replace CWA rule

EPA is said to be planning a two-part rulemaking process to rework the Obama administration's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule, with a blanket repeal of the existing policy to be followed later by a new rule setting a narrower definition of which waters are subject to the law's mandates than the Obama EPA's policy. According to an April 12 Energy & Environment News report EPA's acting wetlands director Mindy Eisenberg told the Association of State Wetlands Managers' spring...

Wastewater Utilities Fear Suit Could Block Variances For CWA Compliance

Municipal wastewater utilities are urging a federal court to uphold EPA's approval of a general variance to Montana's numeric nutrient standards, arguing that if environmentalists are successful in their challenge to the agency's decision, it could prevent EPA from using variances as a compliance tool in any state. The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), which represents municipal wastewater utilities, says in an April 10 brief in the suit that if the environmentalists prevail, “the case will call...

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