As regulators and advocates grapple with the fallout of a Supreme
Courtroom ruling that narrowed the Clear Water Act, water lawyer Rhett
Larson presents a relaxing bit of recommendation: Be like Bruce Lee.

“I might encourage all of us to embrace the martial arts philosophy
of Bruce Lee, who stated: Be water,” Larson, a senior analysis fellow at
the Kyl Heart
for Water Coverage, stated. “If we’re to successfully handle water, we have now
to be extra like water and be as adaptive because the useful resource we’re looking for
to guard.”

That’s the problem for state and federal regulators who’re
creating new laws to adjust to the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling in Sackett v. EPA, which stated the federal government can solely regulate waters which have a direct connection to floor waters.

Critics stated the court docket’s limits on the so-called Waters of the US, or WOTUS, rule might have an outsized affect in a state like Arizona, the place most of the waterways are ephemeral and intermittent.

“Over 95% of our streams are ephemeral, which means they solely circulate in
response to precipitation,” stated Larson, highlighting the chance this
presents if these waterways had been to be backfilled to make manner for
improvement.

The Environmental Safety Company stated in an emailed assertion that
it’s working with the Military Corps of Engineers to plan new WOTUS
guidelines according to the Sackett ruling. That new rule is anticipated to
be issued by Sept. 1.

Within the meantime, the Arizona Division of Environmental High quality stated
that whereas Sackett was a “important choice,” waters in Arizona are
nonetheless protected by a raft of safeguards.

“The Clear Water Act represents just one software within the toolbox to
defend water assets in Arizona,” stated an emailed assertion from the
division, which highlighted protections just like the state’s Floor Water
Safety Program and Aquifer Safety Program. It additionally pointed to
Military Corps allow necessities that regulate development exercise
round waterways.

State ranchers are continuing cautiously as nicely, at the same time as they welcome the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling.

Jeff Eisenberg, coverage director on the Arizona Cattle Growers
Affiliation, stated ranchers are “comfortable to have the facility of the federal
authorities over land use checked,” however confused that the ruling has not
had a big effect on ranchers’ every day lives as but.

“A whole lot of these ephemeral streams in Arizona, they don’t even join
to different our bodies of water,” he stated. “They emerge and sink again into the
floor.”

Eisenberg stated there are way more urgent issues for the federal
authorities to give attention to. He stated there have been “critical points on the market,
and the federal government ought to go take these on” as an alternative of making an attempt to regulate
ranchers, who already “exist on the outer margins of life as we all know
it.”

“Whenever you take a look at all the large issues for air pollution, that is like within the backside 1/a centesimal of 1% of these issues,” he stated.

Larson stated the affect on Arizona’s water high quality from Sackett is
more likely to be restricted because of stronger legal guidelines the state has than its
neighbors, however he’s frightened in regards to the ruling’s potential to extend
flood threat.

His feedback got here at a July roundtable organized by Home Democrats titled “Murky Waters: Navigating a Publish-Sackett World.”

Whereas the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling eliminated safety from many
ephemeral and intermittent water sources, it didn’t specify which, or
what number of, had been lined, sparking debate about its attain.

Democrats on the assembly stated the justices “wrote a choice that defies the essential logic of hydrology.”

“Anyone who’s ever labored on water points understands that our
hydrological programs are inextricably linked,” stated Rep. Melanie
Stansbury, D-N.M. She stated in arid states, defending wetlands is an
integral a part of defending floor waters.

In his opinion
for the court docket, Justice Samuel Alito justified the change by saying the
present WOTUS guidelines “criminalize mundane actions like shifting filth,”
placing a “staggering array of landowners liable to prison
prosecution or onerous civil penalties.” The ruling brings readability to
the definition of WOTUS, he stated.

However Stansbury accused the justices of constructing the state of affairs “muddier,” fairly than clarifying issues.

Larson fears that Sackett will permit for backfilling of areas,
beforehand protected by WOTUS, that would worsen drainage and result in
extra and larger floods.

He stated the court docket doesn’t appear to know the distinction between a
river in Arizona and one on the East Coast, noting that solely one of many
9 justices come from west of the Mississippi River.

“Considered one of my largest annoyances with the Sackett opinion is that
there’s an element the place Justice Alito says, nicely, in widespread parlance, we
all know what a river is. Properly, Arizonans, once we say river, we imply a
very totally different factor than individuals in Washington, D.C.,” he stated.

“Individuals in Arizona, whenever you say, ‘Identify me a river,’ will identify rivers
just like the Gila, the Salt, the Santa Cruz, the San Pedro, a lot of which
have ephemeral beds. I drive daily over the Gila River and the Salt
River, and there’s virtually by no means water in there, however I nonetheless name it a
river.”

Larson stated one other facet distinctive to Arizona is the state’s
dependence on the Colorado River, “which implies how different states,
notably states adjoining to us or upstream of us, deal with water
issues loads to us as a result of we take up numerous the issues because the
downstream neighbor.”

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Phoenix, joined Larson in his concern in regards to the
elevated threat of flooding because of the ruling, saying there was
“no place in America the place water issues greater than in Arizona.”

Talking after the listening to, Stanton stated that ephemeral streams had been
“critically vital” for distributing monsoon season rains and so had been
accountable for defending individuals and property from flooding.

He stated that as Arizona grows, financial and improvement pursuits
have to be balanced with the necessity to defend water sources, and that
“proper now, I feel the Sackett choice went up to now to 1 facet that
we’ve upset that vital steadiness.”

With new laws anticipated by Sept. 1, Larson and others are
hoping for a extra versatile definition that they are saying displays the truth
of water coverage.

“It’s the nature of the regulation to attract strains and it’s the nature of
water to defy strains,” Larson stated. “However, water doesn’t care about these
strains. It should take up into, circulate beneath, fly over and erode away any line
you try to attract round it.”

And he pointed as soon as once more to the martial arts legend for steering.

“Bruce Lee says, you place water right into a bottle, it turns into the bottle.
You place it right into a cup. It turns into the cup. We want a Clear Water Act
that works that manner,” he stated.