EPA eyes new WOTUS definition coming soon

Lee Zeldin knew the five letters that would get a rise out of county officials — W-O-T-U-S. 

When addressing the General Session audience Feb. 24, Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced that the agency was close to finalizing a definition for the Waters of the United States regulation of the Clean Water Act. 

The Waters of the United States defines the scope of the waterways under federal jurisdiction, guided by a patchwork of rulemaking and court cases since 2015. That has affected county operations ranging from essential water infrastructure to roadside ditches, slowing and adding costs and doubt to various county projects over the years.

“We believe strongly that farmers, ranchers, landowners, local governments shouldn’t have to pay an attorney or a consultant to tell you whether or not there’s a water of the United States subject to federal jurisdiction on your land,” he said. “It should be simple for you to know on your own.”

Zeldin previously represented part of Long Island in New York’s congressional delegation prior to leading the EPA.

“We have a goal to have a simple, prescriptive definition that strictly follows the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sackett,” he said, referring to Sackett v. EPA, a 2023 decision that significantly narrowed the scope of the act to permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water that form geographical features.

Zeldin also opined on the EPA’s goals for permitting reform efforts that followed the same tenets at the WOTUS rule.

“A good bill would be a bill that results in a permanent process that takes less time, costs less money and has more certainty,” he said. 

Zeldin said he had hopes that with advances in the technology that remediates PFAS, Congress will have an opportunity to legislate a solution that forces polluters to pay for remediation for the long-lasting chemicals that have infiltrated groundwater and have been linked to adverse health effects. The beginning of the Trump administration coincided with compliance deadlines that would have forced water systems to bear the costs to remove PFAS.

“What we decided to do with [PFAS], based off of concerns expressed to us from thousands of water systems across this entire country, is to give a two-year compliance headline to allow these local water systems to put together the resources, to pay for it, and to vet out and lean into the different technologies that are coming online and help allow all of you to get this done faster,” he said.  “Instead of you, your local water system, having the responsibility of having to pay for it, and then passing it off to the rate payer. People should not have to pay to clean up PFAS from their own water supply.”

Those moving timelines for both WOTUS and PFAS illustrated Zeldin’s perspective on his work.

“An agency like EPA has the power to really slow things down. We also have the power to speed things up,” he said. 

Throughout his remarks, Zeldin emphasized his priority for reducing regulations and giving end users more choice, noting that “protecting the environment and growing the economy is not a binary choice.”

“I think it’s a lot easier for you, as local leaders, to be able to recruit projects, to keep power plants open, to be able to fight for and represent your people, when the federal government — as often as humanly possible — can just get out of your way and allow you to lead,” he said, “because you know your local counties, better than bureaucrats, or Washington, D.C.”