Environmentalists Considering Lawsuit Over EPA Water Rule

Even before the EPA published a new rule to update the Clean Water Act, it was clear the controversial policy would draw legal fire from opponents, which include political conservatives and the agriculture industry. But now it appears the government may get attacked from the left as well.

“The biggest threat to the Obama administration's ambitious water rule may come not from industry foes or states challenging what they call a federal power grab, but from greens suing under one of the country's foremost environmental laws,” E&E News reported, citing legal experts.

Environmentalists and some high-level officials expressed concern about the rule potentially not going far enough.

“Those concerns are likely to fuel legal challenges under a number of laws. But it was a call for a more thorough assessment of the rule under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that corps experts repeatedly sounded in memos -- and that ultimately went unheeded by their Pentagon policy bosses,” the report said.

Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law expert at Vermont Law School and a proponent of the rule, weighed in about potential legal challenges.

“This is not quibbling over little things within EPA's discretion,” he said, per the report. "NEPA is a mandate. NEPA is a clear, clean procedural requirement, so if the Corps of Engineer experts are saying the way you've drawn this line excludes certain waters that we've historically regulated under [the Clean Water Act] and have all sorts of value, that sets off alarm bells for me."

The controversial regulation has the stated aim of protecting U.S. waterways and clarifying the EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act.

A group of attorneys general from conservative and conservative-leaning states is already contesting the recent Clean Water Act update on the grounds that it represents government overreach.

West Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, and Georgia all joined the suit against the new mandate from the U.S. EPA. In addition, “18 other states filed three similar suits over the highly contested rule, which the states claim unfairly expands the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ protected by the Clean Water Act, defies previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, oversteps states' rights to regulate their own waterways and harms businesses and landowners,” Law 360 reported.