Clean Water Act Jurisdiction Rule Sent to White House for Review
This week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) announced that they have submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a joint final rule aimed at clarifying which water bodies are subject to Federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. On April 6, 2015, the agencies announced on an EPA blog that the draft final rule was recently submitted to OMB for interagency review. EPA and the Corps published their initial rulemaking proposal in early 2014 and reportedly received more than one million stakeholder comments since then. Interagency review of a final draft rule is generally considered the last step in the federal rulemaking process.