January 5, 2023 |
Senator John Barrasso said this week that President Joe Biden is reviving a federal effort abandoned under the Trump Administration to control Wyoming’s water.
WOTUS is back. The Environmental Protection Agency released its final rule regarding the definition, of “waters of the United States.” The WOTUS water grab first began under the Obama Administration.
Many states, including Wyoming, challenged the 2015 Rule because its expansive assertion of federal jurisdiction threatened to saddle them and their citizens with substantial costs and infringed their traditional sovereign authority over their lands and waters.
Senator Barrasso said in a statement that “President Biden is raising from the dead the failed policies of the Obama Administration.”
The EPA said in announcing the rule that is meant to protect people’s health and support economic opportunity.
Barrasso called the rule misguided. “Make no mistake, this isn’t about protecting America’s waterways – it’s about putting Washington in control of everything from ponds to potholes.”
The new rule is meant to replace Trump’s 2020 Navigable Water Protection Rule which was designed to allow Wyoming and to be its own “prime caretaker.” Governor Mark Gordon supported the rule and the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office joined 22 other states to intervene as a amicus curiae—or friends of the court—in a lawsuit brought by California and New York against the Trump rule.
Pictured above: File photo of the Upper North Platte River. Photo by Bigfoot 99.
