Environmentalists Eye Law, Science To Fight Trump's CWA Rule Revisions

摘要

Environmentalists plan to use Supreme Court precedent and extensive scientific data to fight the Trump administration's expected revisions to weaken EPA's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule, saying an executive order (EO) forcing the changes conflicts with high court rulings and the existing rule's scientific justification. President Donald Trump's Feb. 28 EO requires EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider their joint 2015 rule defining the water law's reach, and to weigh replacing it with a regulation based on the late Justice Antonin Scalia's restrictive test for when waterbodies are protected by the CWA set out in the 2006 case Rapanos v. United States. Such an approach would reverse the Obama administration's reliance on Justice Anthony Kennedy's broader test from the same case that determines jurisdiction based on a "significant nexus" between waters.