The Trump administration’s EPA is moving to restrict federal definitions of protected waterways, eliminating protections for seasonal and temporary water systems like wetlands, streams, and ditches, according to a Nov. 17 announcement.
The updated regulations in the Clean Water Act revise the definition of “waters of the United States,” (WOTUS) to align with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA. That ruling presents a more broad definition of the Clean Water Act, limiting protected waters to those that are “standing or continuously flowing year-round or at least during the wet season.”
“Waters of the US”
Prior to the Kentucky General Assembly’s passage of Senate Bill 89, the state’s water protections would have continued to include temporary water systems. The state regulations for water protections were more strict than those of the federal government. However, Kentucky law now requires that water regulations adhere to the federal standard of WOTUS.
Nick Hart, water policy director for the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, said the restricted definition is a dangerous step for the environment and for Kentucky communities that rely on clean water.
“By removing the term, ‘Waters of the Commonwealth,’ and adopting ‘Waters of the U.S.,’ we have lots of discharges that could be very harmful to the environment,” Hart said. “Unless it’s characterized by some other waste management scheme, it’s no longer pollution if you put it into a disconnected wetland. It’s no longer pollution if you put it into an ephemeral stream. It’s no longer pollution, according to this new rule proposal, if you put it into a roadside ditch. That’s really the scary part about this new definition.”
Hart explained that while these temporary waterways may not be direct water sources, they do drain and flow into larger bodies of water that are accessed for drinking water, recreation, and infrastructure. According to the 2023 Supreme Court decision that would rewrite the definition, he said it will be more difficult for Kentuckians to find drinkable, swimmable, or fishable waters.
Ecologically, the new definition places Kentucky’s wetlands at a significantly increased risk of pollution.
Roughly 80 percent of Kentucky’s wetlands have been drained and removed for agriculture, land management, colonization and the timber industry. Kentucky currently has roughly 320,000 acres of wetlands according to modern GIS mapping. Following the definition laid out by the Sackett decision, roughly 44,000 acres, or 15%, of those wetlands would meet the criteria for protection.
The new definition would also effectively eliminate existing protections for ephemeral streams, which typically only flow briefly following heavy rain or snowfall. A recent study found that, while small and temporary, ephemeral streams provide more than 50% of the water that flows through most river systems used in drinking water supplies.
The Natural Resources Defense Fund created an interactive map displaying wetlands, marshes, bogs, and swamps across the U.S. that would lose protections under the Sackett decision. Hart said that adhering to the new definition would cost taxpayers more in the long run, and undo decades of progress in habitat restoration.
“We’re privatizing the benefits of not having to follow regulations, and then socializing the costs to residents and taxpayers for us to either pay higher prices to clean water, or more of our tax dollars go to mitigate the environmental harms that not following regulations has caused,” Hart said. “Kentucky has spent millions of dollars protecting wetlands and protecting streams, and/or mitigating harms or reconstructing these environmental resources because we have not taken care of them in the past.”
He added that nonprofit groups like The Nature Conservancy have also invested millions of dollars in the revitalization of Kentucky’s water systems. Beyond the ecological benefits of habitat biodiversity, bolstering wetlands improves community water quality by filtering pollutants, trapping sediment, and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Those natural services have saved Kentuckians millions of dollars in water sanitation costs. Historically, wetlands also act as natural sponges, and their removal from the landscape has been linked to severe flooding events recorded across the state.
Hart said that removing those protections will have both a financial and social cost for ratepayers.
“It’s really a shift of social responsibility when we don’t make the people who are having the biggest impact on our environment pay to ensure that they’re not going to impact their neighbors,” Hart said. “If we don’t do that, those costs get shifted onto everyday people who have to pay higher bills, don’t have as many spots to go fishing, or have to tell their kids out in eastern Kentucky to be scared of water, because you can’t play in it.”
“Regulatory relief”
Agricultural and industrial groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture have lauded the new WOTUS definition, citing ongoing difficulty in ensuring profit while adhering to water safety regulations. In a statement, the EPA said the regulation used input from multiple sources, including public listening events, state, tribe and local government consultation, and the guidance of the Sackett decision.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement, “Democrat administrations have weaponized the definition of navigable waters to seize more power from American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and families,” Zeldin said. “EPA is delivering on President Trump’s promise to finalize a revised definition for WOTUS that protects the nation’s navigable waters from pollution, advances cooperative federalism by empowering states, and will result in economic growth across the country.”
Hart and fellow environmental experts say that reasoning contradicts decades of scientific research that back the current definitions of protected waterways.
“This rule ignores and kind of throws shade at very sound, accepted science. They're trying to create these hard lines when water does not work on a hard line. That’s the biggest challenge of this scenario - they’re removing evidence-based, widely accepted science about how water flows across a landscape, and creating these other methods of how they want water to act,” Hart said.
Zeldin and the EPA have cited the Trump-backed “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative, a program that has largely focused on deregulation for the sake of increased economic and industrial growth. Hart said the administration’s focus on removing environmental regulations will be environmentally, financially, and socially detrimental to Kentucky residents. The state already has a long history of water quality problems, with thousands of miles of Kentucky’s rivers, lakes, and streams reportedly impaired, according to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. The state has reportedly seen more extreme rainfall in recent years, with 2025 being the wettest on record. Hart said those trends, coupled with stripped protections for waterways, will open the state’s waterways to dramatically increased levels of pollution, with financial and social costs being absorbed by ratepayers.
“By following this deregulatory agenda, especially when it comes to water, we’re removing protections from real people in Kentucky. This is going to create more social impacts than I think we’re ready for,” Hart said. “We’ve stopped rivers from catching on fire. Where does a river catch on fire now? We stopped that, and now we’re going back to a place where that could be a reality.”
The proposed revision to the definition of WOTUS has not been finalized. It must first be submitted to the Federal Registry for publication. Once submitted, the EPA will be required to solicit public comment on the proposed rule for 45 days before it can be finalized.
