Obama’s interpretation of the Waters of the United States rule empowered EPA regulators to harass just about anyone they wanted with water on their property. But U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood just set that abuse back, hopefully for good.
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood has handed a victory to the state of Georgia and nine other states that sued the federal government (and to the rest of the nation) by declaring that the WOTUS Rule is unlawful.
WOTUS is one of Obama’s many EPA abuses. It declared Clean Waters Act oversight for federal regulators concerning any lake, pond, river, stream, even ditches with water, that they felt like regulating. One infamous case involved a farmer in Wyoming. He was fined 37,500.00 dollars per day for what they determined to be an illegal pond on his property. It was not.
Concerning the rule, Judge Wood stated that,
“…the WOTUS rule’s vast expansion of jurisdiction over waters and land traditionally within the states’ regulatory authority cannot stand absent a clear statement from Congress in the CWA. Since no such statement has been made, the WOTUS rule is unlawful under the CWA.”
Mr. Trump’s EPA has already been working on returning those water rights to the states. Having a federal judge remand “it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for further work” makes the process easier.
Let’s hope they already have their new interpretation ready for review. And that it returns water rights to states and individual property owners where it belongs.
