Capito, Graves, Lummis, Rouzer Ask for Biden Administration's Next Steps in Implementing Supreme Court WOTUS Ruling

Letter

"The Court's ruling reinforces property owners' rights, protects the separation of powers by limiting your Agencies' authority to what Congress has delegated in statute, and ensures adherence to the congressional intent in writing the Clean Water Act (CWA). Additionally, the Court upholds the cooperative federalism framework of the CWA, as well as the states' authority and responsibility to regulate non-Federal waters within their borders. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed that the Biden Administration's definition of "waters of the United States' (WOTUS) based on "significant nexus' is illegitimate, and a majority of the Court articulated a clear, easily administrable definition of WOTUS."

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

"In implementing the Court's decision, the Agencies must adhere to the majority opinion and not slow-walk compliance with the decision. The Agencies wasted valuable time and resources by prioritizing the promulgation of a rule over the first two years of the Biden Administration; that is now clearly unlawful. Notably, this Administration ignored our repeated admonitions that the Agencies should wait until the Supreme Court acted to proceed, and our warnings that the rule being drafted would not be "durable." Now the EPA and the Corps must work to bring application of WOTUS quickly and effectively in line with Sackett II."

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