Water Protected by the Clean Water Act: Cutting Through the Rhetoric on the Proposed Rule

In an article published by the Environmental Law Reporter, Stoel Rives partner Michael Campbell provides a review of proposed revisions to the rules defining which bodies of water are protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA). The revisions, published on March 25, 2014, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, have come under fire from a number of elected officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

Campbell walks readers through the proposed changes and provides a summary of the current definitions of the term “navigable water.” He concludes that with a politically divided government that will likely continue until at least 2017, an amendment clarifying the scope of the CWA is unlikely in the near future.

“Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act: Cutting Through the Rhetoric on the Proposed Rule” was published by the Environmental Law Reporter, July 2014.