WOTUS Finality in Sight?
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I’m Haylie Shipp on the Ag Information.
WOTUS – Waters of the U.S. – it’s the acronym depicting a continuing storyline that I’ve have now been covering in the news for 16 years.
Could there be some finality in sight? WOTUS was just a big part of a Supreme Court case heard this year.
This week I caught up with Courtney Briggs, Senior Director of Government Affairs with the American Farm Bureau…
“We expect a decision to come out of Sackett in the first 6 months of next year. And I think that, given the court’s makeup, there’s a strong likelihood that the court will hand down a decision that provides clarity and certainty to the regulated community because it will finally drive a stake in the heart of the use of the significant nexus test which is a very troubling test that has created a lot of confusion on the ground.”
That "significant nexus" test determines whether a wetland is jurisdictional under the federal Clean Water Act. Briggs says this is the case to watch…
“The Supreme Court only accepts 1% of cases that are presented to them, so the fact that they decided to hear this case is really quite a big deal.”
Again Courtney Briggs, Senior Director of Government Affairs with the American Farm Bureau. As she told us, we are expecting a decision to come out of the Sackett case in the first 6 months of 2023.
