The National Chicken Council filed comments Monday on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rule that would revise the definition of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS).
The comments, filed jointly with the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, National Turkey Federation and United Egg Producers, expressed support for EPA’s proposed rule. Citing circuit court and Supreme Court (SCOTUS) precedent, the comments addressed EPA’s effort to draw jurisdictional boundaries and provide needed certainty regarding regulatory oversight of wetlands, tributaries, lakes and ponds, intermittent waters, floodplains, groundwater, ditches, prior converted cropland and water treatment systems.
President Trump directed EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to craft a new WOTUS rule shortly after taking office, instructing the agencies to follow former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion in a 2006 SCOTUS case addressing WOTUS.
Scalia’s opinion said the WOTUS phrase includes only “”relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” and that it “does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall,” a significantly more narrow scope than the Obama administration’s 2015 interpretation.
EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers issued their proposal in December, but it wasn’t published in the Federal Register until February 14. The 60-day public comment period closed April 15.
The proposal primarily seeks to adjust jurisdictional boundaries first set in the Obama administration’s 2015 WOTUS rule. Among the changes: the federal government would no longer assert jurisdiction over ephemeral waters, which flow in response to rain or snowfall, and would define intermittent waters as “surface water flowing continuously during certain times of a typical year, not merely in direct response to precipitation, but when the groundwater table is elevated, for example, or when snowpack melts.”
