EPA officials to make ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä listening stop for plan to weaken water protections

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Army will hold back-to-back listening sessions Wednesday afternoon in West Virginia’s capital to gather feedback on the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, nearly two years after the agencies narrowed rule protections for wetlands — areas where water covers soil and which help control floods and enhance water quality.

EPA Region 3 Administrator Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey, EPA Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Peggy Browne and EPA Division Director of the Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds Stacey Jensen will attend, per a Wednesday agency news release.

The EPA and Army listening stop is intended to help the agencies “understand real-world perspectives and experiences with WOTUS implementation,� the EPA said in the release.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March the agencies plan to revise the definition of WOTUS in line with a 2023 Supreme Court decision that favored a narrower test to determine whether the Clean Water Act applies to a wetland.

But the agencies already narrowed WOTUS wetland protections that year following the court’s decision, removing what’s been known as the “significant nexus� test from consideration when identifying tributaries and other waters as federally protected. That move disappointed proponents of less-stringent wetlands oversight and environmental advocates who feared it would be a major blow to clean water.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., now chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who had backed weakening the rule, was unsatisfied with the Biden administration’s rule revision, calling it emblematic of an “unserious approach to issuing a durable rule that provides stability to millions of Americans.�

But Capito and other proponents of a weakened waters rule applauded Zeldin’s March announcement of further rule revision plans. The EPA under Zeldin has contended the revision would result in eliminating red tape and cutting permitting costs.

The EPA now plans to rescind guidance that assumed a “discrete feature� like a nonjurisdictional ditch, swale, pipe or culvert establishes a “continuous surface connection� that triggers the rule.

Wiping out consideration of “discrete features� to find a “continuous surface connection� would further limit the scope of the Clean Water Act.

Fears of wetland losses, drinking water quality erosion

In a public comment it submitted on the EPA’s plan last month, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition argued the proposed WOTUS definition requiring a “continuous surface connection� is too narrow, contending it ignores groundwater processes that connect streams and wetlands.

Citing a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection estimate that over 80% of wetlands in West Virginia have been lost, the Rivers Coalition asserted that ignoring groundwater connectivity likely would result in further losses, exposing downstream communities to elevated risks for flooding and drought.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a national science advocacy group, said in a March statement the EPA’s latest guidance ignores scientific evidence showing wetlands are critical to preserving clean waterways and safe drinking water.

“The Trump EPA is giving a green light for industrial agriculture to further pollute and drain valuable wetlands that currently provide substantial benefits to communities, including flood protection and clean drinking water,� Stacy Woods, research director for the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.

Violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act have abounded in West Virginia. Of West Virginia’s 831 public water systems, 622 — 74.8% — had violations of that law in 2023, according to Environmental Protection Agency data, dwarfing the national average of 27.6%. West Virginia’s percentage of public water systems with drinking water violations was 18.5 percentage points higher than that of the second-highest state, Oklahoma, at 56.1%.

Violations include health-based violations (violations of maximum allowed concentrations of contaminants or disinfectants in drinking water, or of treatment technique rules), monitoring and reporting violations, and failures to alert consumers when there is a serious problem with their drinking water that may pose a public health risk.

West Virginia had the country’s second-highest percentage of public health systems with health-based violations in 2023 — 26.1% — well above the national average of 4.8%. Only Louisiana’s 27.5% clip was higher. West Virginia had more than twice as many public water systems with health-based violations, 217, as neighbor Ohio’s 104 despite having 3,537 fewer systems.

W.Va. wants WOTUS reach limited

But West Virginia led a 19-state coalition urging federal authorities in a letter last month to limit the rule’s reach in their latest revision, claiming that “[f]ederal misadventures in this space over the last several years have caused untold millions of dollars to be wasted� on litigation and regulatory efforts.

West Virginia, led by Attorney General John “JB� McCuskey, and other Republican-led states called for a WOTUS definition that presumes waters aren’t protected by federal jurisdiction “unless it is affirmatively established that they are.�

“Traditional state primacy over most water features is supposed to be a feature of our federalist system, not a bug to be creatively overcome by federal rulemaking,� the states argued in their letter.