WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. SEN. KIRSTEN Gillibrand (D-NY) on Friday joined 15 Senate Democrats in opposing the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the “Waters of the United States” rule, a move that would limit federal protections for wetlands and some waterways. In a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army Adam Telle, the senators expressed concern, saying the rule change is “legally unnecessary, scientifically unsound, and will harm public and environmental health by allowing more harmful chemicals into our waterways.”
The change stems from a controversial 2023 Supreme Court decision, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, which held in a 5-4 decision that wetlands that don’t have a continuous surface connection to a relatively permanent body of water do not count as “Waters of the United States” under the Clean Waters Act, and are thus not subject to federal protections. The Trump administration’s proposed revision would define “continuous surface connection” to mean directly touching, explicitly excluding groundwater, and “relatively permanent” to mean continuously present during at least an unspecified wet season. The senators argue that these definitions are unnecessarily restrictive, and would lead to significant pollution, violating the EPA’s mandate to secure the nation’s water supply.
“Sackett stripped protections for anywhere between 60 to 80 percent of America’s wetlands, depending on ultimate implementation. And yet, the administration’s new 2025 proposed rule goes even further than Sackett’s draconian definition, excluding many types of headwaters, tributaries, and ephemeral or intermittent streams and water bodies,” the senators wrote.
“The proposed rule would improperly exclude from federal jurisdiction many discharges that are functionally equivalent to discharges into jurisdictional waters. The ecology of these important water bodies is inextricably tied to the water quality of traditionally navigable waters. These water bodies are the capillaries and kidneys of the nation’s watersheds; when they are polluted or filled in, harm flows downstream in the form of higher nutrient, sediment, and toxic loads.”
“Municipal water utilities and their ratepayers—the American people—will disproportionately bear the economic burden of remediating the poorer quality water this rule will cause.”
✰✰✰
