Industry Says Flaws In EPA 'Waters' Rule Ensure Return To Supreme Court

摘要

Industry officials say EPA's final Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule fails to achieve its goal of providing regulatory certainty on the law's reach and contains a host of other flaws, which the sources say ensures litigation that will result in the Supreme Court again having to weigh in on the years-long fight over the law's scope. "This is going to end up in the Supreme Court," says one industry source, even though the last time the justices took up CWA jurisdiction it led to two competing tests for determining the law's scope that EPA's final rule is meant to resolve. Fights over the law's scope could remain unresolved for years, the source says, given the time taken for litigation and the fact that the membership of the Supreme Court several years from now is unpredictable.