Three years after the Supreme Court exempted millions of acres of wetlands from the Clean Water Act, only a few states have opted to make up for the loss in protections.
With the Trump administration now shrinking federal oversight of wetlands and streams even further, roughly half of states lack a regulatory system to fill the gaps — about the same number as before the high court’s ruling.
For decades, states have mostly relied on permit specialists and scientists at the Army Corps of Engineers to regulate wetlands, which absorb floodwaters and help filter pollutants out of water supplies. Following Sackett v. EPA, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that significantly reduced the number of waters and wetlands under the federal government’s purview, environmentalists had hoped states would take on a greater regulatory role.
But only two — New Mexico and Colorado — have enacted new laws to regulate wetlands in the past three years. A few others, like Washington state, have bolstered wetland oversight programs that existed previously. And at least four states — North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and Indiana — have reduced protections during the same period.
