October 26, 2026 Summary The EPA Region 4 is requesting public comment on its decision to add 14 waterbodies to Florida’s 2024 303(d) list. EPA’s implementing regulations for Section 303(d)(2) of the Clean Water Act require that states submit, every two (2) years, a list of waters within its boundaries for which existing pollution controls fail to achieve or maintain state water quality standards. The EPA must approve or disapprove each list, referred to as a 303(d) list or list of impaired and threatened waters. The EPA partially approved Florida’s 2024 303(d) list, agreeing with the state’s inclusion of 3202 waterbody-pollutant combinations on its list, as well as the removal of 266 waterbody-pollutant combinations. However, based on readily available data and information, the EPA determined that 14 waterbody-pollutant combinations should have been included and has added those to the state’s 303(d) list. Comments must be submitted no later than November 26, 2026, to pohnan.joseph@epa.gov. Supplementary information: Section 303(c) of the Clean Water Act requires states to adopt water quality standards that set the goals for each waterbody. These standards designate uses for each body of water such as recreation, aquatic life habitat, or drinking (40 Code of Federal Regulations 131.10);...

Explore an interactive StoryMap and learn about the history of the Clean Water Act.

WASHINGTON— More than 120 organizations urged Congress today to reject the Clean Water Act provisions in the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026,” introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Mike Lee (R-Utah). The bill includes sweeping provisions that will eviscerate core provisions of the Clean Water Act meant to protect the nation’s rivers, streams, wetlands and drinking water. “It’s beyond ridiculous to propose such regressive legislation at a time when we should be strengthening protections for clean water,” said J.W. Glass, senior EPA policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Communities across the country are struggling with PFAS contamination and witnessing wetlands and rivers dry up before their very eyes. It’s a disgrace to ignore these real problems while allowing corporate interest to build data centers, pipelines and other polluting projects with little oversight.” The legislation would eviscerate the Section 401 certification process, a key Clean Water Act authority used by states and Tribes to protect their communities from water pollution and other harms from pipelines, transmission lines, and other large scale industrial development. This bill goes even further than the Trump administration’s Section 401 certification rule by both...

The Clean Water Act was passed more than 50 years ago in response to widespread outrage over the use of our nation’s waterways as dumping grounds for pollution. Thanks to this law, our waterways have ...

Restore the protections for streams and wetlands necessary to secure safe, clean water.

Washington can proceed in its legal fight to hold two gold mining companies accountable for violating the Clean Water Act and discharging illegal levels of pollutants into groundwater and creeks in Ok...

The Clean Water Act is under attack! The EPA wants to further limit which waterways are federally protected, prioritizing the interests of polluters over the health and safety of our communities. Send...

Last November, the Trump administration proposed a regulation that would strip federal water pollution protections from wide swaths of wetlands in the United States. Now, ten months later, the administration has updated it in an attempt to take away even more wetland protections. Under the new proposal, which was published last Wednesday in the federal register, pollution of a wetlands would only be regulated if the wetland in question flows year-round, with one exception per year of up to 30 days. Under the earlier proposal, wetlands only needed to flow continuously during the wet season to receive protections. If the new rule is approved, factory farms and other industrial polluters would be allowed to dump waste into unprotected wetlands without any federal restriction or oversight. Wetlands are areas in which soil is saturated with or covered by a shallow amount of water, such as a marsh or a swamp. The new rule would also strip protections from many of the nation’s intermittent streams, says Royal Gardner, director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law in Florida and author of the book “Waters of the United States.” “Should such a rule be finalized, millions...

EPA and Army Corps propose new limits on which wetlands and streams receive federal protection. EPA also wants to revise the Clean Water Act’s regulatory language to exempt ships from requiring pollution permits. U.S. Forest Service approves an operations plan for a new manganese mine in southern Arizona. Monthly wildfire outlook shows high risk areas in the Pacific Northwest, Lower Mississippi River, Texas, and Oklahoma. EPA offers cybersecurity grants to water systems, while the White House announces a cybersecurity support program for Texas water utilities. Army Corps receives a wetlands-filling application from Project Dazzler, a Google-linked data center along the Ohio River in southern Ohio. BLM proposes opening a Utah national wildlife refuge to oil and gas leasing. And lastly, the Bureau of Reclamation objects strongly to California’s proposed water quality standards for the Bay-Delta watershed. By the Numbers $11.75 Million: EPA grants to 10 water utilities to beef up their cybersecurity. The White House also launched a cybersecurity assistance program for water systems, called Project Watershed 250. The public-private collaboration will begin in Texas. 8.3 Million: Acres burned by wildfire in the United States this year through September 6, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That represents 66...

Podcast Episode · Political Views TV · September 7 · 53m

President Donald Trump's administration sparked fresh fury on Friday when it proposed a supplemental rule to further gut Clean Water Act protections for streams and wetlands in the wake of a "catastrophic" US Supreme Court ruling three years ago. The supplemental proposal from the Department of the Army and Environmental Protection Agency builds on their widely criticized proposed rule from November for defining "waters of the United States" (WOTUS)—both of which go further than the high court did with its 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA. While the American Petroleum Institute and some Republicans in Congress joined Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in promoting the new proposal, environmental and public health advocates sounded the alarm. "What the Supreme Court did in its Sackett decision was an inexcusable assault on clean water," Jon Devine, director of freshwater ecosystems at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a Friday statement. "Communities and wildlife will pay the price until Congress fixes it. The Trump administration's answer has been to make a bad situation worse." "This proposal declares open season on the nation's waterways. It denies federal protection to virtually all wetlands and more...

“SEC Chair Paul Atkins has yet to meet a rule he does not want to rescind," said Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets. "He has the SEC proposing to rescind a rule that prevents so-called ‘pay-to-play’ practices by investment advisers, where advisers make political contributions to government officials in the hopes that those officials will select them for the lucrative assignment of managing public pension funds and other government assets." “Chair Atkins says the SEC is proposing to rescind the rule because it ‘has effectively resulted in the suppression of political speech.’ Not so," added Schiffrin. "It has resulted in the suppression of corruption. The rule was intended to, and does, ‘combat pay to play arrangements in which advisers are chosen based on their campaign contributions to political officials rather than on merit.’ Chair Atkins apparently believes that such arrangements should be promoted.” The SEC's "pay-to-play" rules, enacted in 2010, barred investment advisers from providing paid services to government clients for at least two years after making a political contribution to an elected official or candidate. The Trump SEC's proposal will face a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register. The Lever's...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it’s seeking additional input on how it defines certain water bodies in the U.S. The supplemental proposal is a continuation of a larger push to redefine which waters of the United States (commonly referred to as WOTUS) can be regulated under the Clean Water Act. A broader proposed rule — one that could roll back protections for 80 percent of the continental U.S.’ mapped wetlands, according to the EPA — underwent public comment in late 2025 and early 2026 but has not yet been finalized. The conservation community has warned that these sweeping changes to how the waters of the U.S. are regulated would be a disaster for America’s fish and wildlife. Related: ‘This Would Have Serious, Real-World Impacts.’ Why the EPA’s Rule Change on Water Protections Would Be a Disaster for Fish and Wildlife Home-building groups and segments of the agricultural community have cheered the proposed rollbacks, which will allow them to fill in wetlands or discharge pollutants without a federal permit. The 2023 Supreme Court ruling Sackett v. EPA substantially changed how the federal Clean Water Act is interpreted, but also left many key definitions unclear. Friday’s supplemental notice from the...