EPA Defends 2020 WOTUS Rule In New York Landowners' Legal Challenge

摘要

The Trump administration's rule outlining the scope of the Clean Water Act (CWA) is a "reasonable construction of ambiguous statutory terms" in the law and is neither arbitrary nor capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), say EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers in a recent brief to a federal district court in New York. The term "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) in the CWA is ambiguous, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his concurring opinion in Rapanos v. United States that the agencies "should be 'afforded generous leeway' for 'developing some notion of an outer bound' to their CWA jurisdiction," EPA and the Corps tell the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in Murray v. Wheeler.