April 23, 2025
Benita Best-Wong
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Management
Office of Water
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20460
Robyn S. Colosimo
Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works)
Department of the Army
108 Army Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20310
Submitted via regulations.gov
RE: Docket ID Number EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0093: Waters of the U.S. Definition Request for Recommendations
Dear Ms. Best-Wong and Ms. Colosimo,
On behalf of our millions of members and supporters nationwide, the undersigned hunting, fishing, and conservation groups offer the following comments regarding the request for recommendations for revising the definition of the “waters of the United States.”
Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 in order to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” For decades, the Clean Water Act has been a vital tool to safeguard the water quality of America’s iconic rivers and lakes – including the wetlands and ephemeral and intermittent streams that feed into them. Our organizations do not support any efforts to further weaken or narrow the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act.
Basic federal Clean Water Act protections safeguard the health and safety of all Americans and ensure that fish and wildlife – and the outdoor passions that rely on them – have the water resources needed to thrive. The term “waters of the United States” is determinative of which waters receive these needed protections and which are left to the risk of federally unregulated pollution and destruction. The scope of waters afforded these protections has already been alarmingly eroded as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA and can withstand no further, unwarranted rollbacks. Americans do not support a return to the time before we had strong federal protections when the Cuyahoga River caught fire and made national news due to decades of pollution prior to the establishment of a strong Clean Water Act.
As such, we urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to keep in place the conforming 2023 existing rule, which already modifies the long-standing, Reagan-era definition of “waters of the United States” in alignment with the findings by the Supreme Court in the Sackett decision. We believe the conforming rule gives certainty and clarity in the context of the Sackett decision and that any proposed additional changes should be minimal and carefully weighed with the ability of the Clean Water Act to achieve its goal of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of our Nation’s waters.
Strong Measures to Protect Clean Water Enjoy Broad Support
The Sackett decision has already significantly weakened the Clean Water Act, removing protections for about two-thirds of the nation’s wetlands and up to 5 million miles of streams. Polls consistently show that clean water is an American value, with up to 94% of Americans across all parties supporting clean water protections. This is why strong and broad clean water protections have historically been advanced by both parties.
We urge this Administration to continue this strong bipartisan tradition of protecting clean water, not diluting these protections further. President Trump has vowed that under Administrator Zeldin’s leadership, the EPA would “maintain…the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.” Maintaining protections for our wetlands and streams is in line with Administrator Zeldin’s plan to ensure clean air, land, and water for every American and the President’s commitment to clean water. Protecting wetlands is also in line with the Administration’s mission to be good stewards of tax dollars. Wetlands are powerhouses that can save taxpayer dollars spent on disasters by blunting the impacts of floods, with one acre of wetlands able to store up to 1.5 million gallons of floodwater.
Healthy Waters Protect Communities, Wildlife, and Economies
The value of wetlands and small streams for fish and wildlife habitat and access to clean water and quality outdoor recreation opportunities is indisputable. Further loss of protections would irreversibly harm hunting and angling across the country while devastating the outdoor recreation economy. Wetlands filter the water that eventually flows from our taps, provide immense flood storage and retention, recharge groundwater and streams during times of drought, and provide valuable habitat for wildlife among many other functions. Likewise, streams that do not flow year-round, including some that may only flow seasonally or in response to precipitation or snowmelt, provide over 50% of the flow to our most treasured rivers and up to 95% in our most arid states, where perennial streams are also shifting towards intermittent and ephemeral under current drought conditions. They also sustain prized sport fisheries like trout and salmon by providing important nursery habitat for spawning fish and delivering cool, clean water downstream. This is our drinking water, the places we swim, hunt, fish, and that sustains us. At least 117 million people get their drinking water from sources fed by these streams.
Farmers also rely on these small streams and wetlands for access to clean water and for flood control. Regular farming activities have always been exempted under the Clean Water Act, through every administration since President Nixon. Destroying wetlands upstream can negatively impact downstream farms, including reduced ability to adequately drain fields for planting and increased erosion, putting farmers and everyone who depends on what they produce at risk.
The costs of any further, unnecessary rollbacks will be borne by the public in the form of less safe drinking water, increased flooding, increased wildfire risk, threats to core economic activities that provide jobs and stability to communities, and degraded and destroyed habitat for fish and wildlife among other harms. The economic benefits of hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation – worth $887 billion annually – are especially pronounced in rural areas, where money brought in during fishing and hunting seasons can be enough to keep small businesses operational for the entire year.
The Clean Water Act’s Cooperative Federalism Framework Should Remain Strong
Each waterbody that is not federally protected must be either protected by states or Tribes or lose basic pollution and destruction protection. Furthermore, Tribes have long been insufficiently recognized in the rulemaking process, which has failed to recognize their sovereign status and rights in determining “waters of the United States” on their lands. The Clean Water Act is built on a strong model of cooperative federalism, but this model requires a robust and protective federal role. Many states simply do not have protections for at-risk waters or the capacity to develop such protections – meaning that the waters are effectively left open for unregulated destruction or dumping without federal safeguards. Other states have protections but struggle with the resources to protect all their waters. And even states that do have strong protections and adequate resources are at the mercy of upstream states that may not.
Recommendations
Our key recommendations for any process revisiting the definition of “waters of the United States” are as follows:
- We urge the agencies to, at minimum, maintain current protections and avoid further weakening the definition of “Waters of the United States.” The 2023 conforming definition incorporates all the relevant tests set forth in the Sackett decision and further clarification is not necessary.
- If EPA and the Corps choose to again revise the definition of “waters of the United States” by rule, any changes to the rule must be subject to a rulemaking process that is robust, transparent, deliberate, and driven by science. It should also seek to be as protective as the law allows.
- Any proposed clarifications of terms such as “continuous surface connection” or “relatively permanent” should be based on science and promote the Clean Water Act’s goal to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” – the expressed will of Congress; this will is also consistent with the EPA’s and the Corps’ charge to protect public health and the environment, not executive orders seeking to promote development or elevate the interests of certain industries. We emphasize that since the science-based 2015 Rule, which we firmly supported at the time, the scientific evidence for the importance of ephemeral and intermittent streams and wetlands – and therefore the threat of reduced protections – to the health and resilience of downstream waters has only increased.
We recognize and value the need for durability and certainty in crafting a definition of “waters of the United States.” However, now is the time to strengthen clean water protections, not weaken them. Thank you for the opportunity to share our views on this important issue.
Sincerely,
American Fisheries Society
American Fly Fishing Trade Association
Izaak Walton League of America
National Wildlife Federation
Trout Unlimited
