Legal Updates Whither WOTUS? What the Regulated Community Should Know about the Draft Revisions to the WOTUS Rule
The Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source to navigable waters without a permit. (33 USC 1311). This makes interpreting “navigable waters” key because this term defines the jurisdictional bounds of the Clean Water Act. Yet, the Act simply defines “navigable waters” as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” (33 USC 1362(7)). Thus began the decades-long saga of the “waters of the United States,” or “WOTUS,” defined through multiple agency rulemaking bouts and no fewer than four journeys to the U.S. Supreme Court.
