Articles

Author:  Reed Hopper In a recent "Dear Colleague" letter, Representative Oberstar claims his new bill, "America’s Commitment to Clean Water Act" (H.R.5088), would "restore, but not expand, the geographic scope of the Clean Water Act" that existed prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in SWANCC a ...

Author: Reed Hopper For decades, the Corps of Engineers has exempted from federal regulation so called prior converted croplands.  These are wetlands that have been put to agricultural use prior to 1986.  In 1993, the Corps issued a formal rulemaking that stated these wetlands would continue to be exempt from federal regulation unless t ...

Author: Reed Hopper In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the federal government did not have authority to regulate "isolated" water bodies, like ponds, puddles and mudflats that have no connection to navigable waters.  To find otherwise, the court noted, would violate the intent of Congress, the clear language of the Clean Water ...

Author: Reed Hopper You recall the old line from Otto von Bismarck that to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.  That's certainly true for the Clean Water Act.  There is general agreement that Clean Water Act jurisprudence is a mess; no one knows how far federal jurisdiction extend ...

Author: Reed Hopper We have often lamented the gross overreaching of federal agencies under the Clean Water Act.  When all is said and done, the Corps and EPA have pushed this law to its limits, and beyond, to justify regulating virtually every pond, puddle and ditch in the country.  It now appears our Canadian neighbors … ...

Author: Reed Hopper One has to confess a sort of perverse admiration for the federal government’s unending expansion of power under the Clean Water Act. The recent Draft Guidance on Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act, by the Corps of Engineers and the EPA, that authorizes federal regulation of virtually any wet spot … ...

The United States Supreme Court this Term will hear at least two cases arising under the Clean Water Act:  Decker v. Northwest Environmental Advocates, and Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The former concerns the legality of EPA’s regulation exempting owners and operators of forest roads from ob ...

Last month I wrote about a very peculiar case just argued this week in the United States Supreme Court—Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council—concerning the Clean Water Act’s regulation of stormwater.  The case is peculiar because all the parties and the federal government as amicus agree o ...

In case you haven’t had enough, the Federalist Society has published a podcast of me discussing Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. NRDC, a Clean Water Act case dealing with stormwater pollution, argued earlier this week. … ...