The Waters of the United States (WOTUS), or Clean Water Rule, defines which wetlands are under the jurisdiction of the federal government for regulating provisions of the Clean Water Act of 1972. Due to court decisions and administrative changes, the definitions currently in use varies across the United States. The most recent Clean Water Rule, 2015, is in effect for 22 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories. The remaining 28 states, including Nebraska, are regulated under the 1986/1988 regulatory definition of Waters of the United States, 40 CFR 230.3(s) (EPA 2019). However, in February of April 2019, the two lead federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Army (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USACE) proposed a new Waters of the United States definition.While not specific to the April 2019 proposal, the analysis described in this report estimate the jurisdictional wetlands detailed by the Supreme Court in the“Rapanos Decision,” where Justices Scalia and Kennedy offered opinions for interpretations of the Clean Water Acts jurisdictional waters (Meyer & Robertson 2019). Specifically in this analysis, the Scalia opinion correlates to the “Most Restrictive Scenario”, the Kennedy opinion correlates to the “Very Restrictive Scenario”, and the 2015 Clean Water Rule’s definition serves as the basis for the “Less Restrictive Scenario” (Meyer & Robertson 2019).
