Neal McAliley Quoted in Greenwire: “EPA Says Sackett Will Save Its WOTUS Rule. It May Not Be Enough.”

Neal McAliley was quoted in a Greenwire article titled “EPA Says Sackett Will Save Its WOTUS Rule. It May Not Be Enough.” The piece explores the confusion surrounding a key term in the Trump administration’s proposed Waters of the United States rule, which draws heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA. The proposal introduces an ambiguous concept the court never addressed in its ruling: the “wet season.”

While some environmental lawyers anticipate pushback and possibly litigation because the term has not been codified in prior regulations, not all agree that “wet season” is entirely new. McAliley noted that it resembles a concept from 2008 guidance, in which the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers indicated that tributaries should generally flow at least “seasonally” to qualify as WOTUS. “This proposed rule does not do a major surgery to the structure of the regulation,” he said.

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