California v. Wheeler

The federal district court for the Northern District of California granted federal defendants’ motion for a 60-day stay and to continue deadlines in the case challenging the Trump administration’s rule defining “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. States that had intervened to defend the rule opposed the stay and continuance of the deadlines.

A lawsuit filed by 17 states, the District of Columbia, and New York to challenge EPA’s new definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) raised issues related to climate change. The complaint asserted that the final rule’s “typical year” requirement—which the rule uses to define when tributaries, lakes, ponds, and impoundments are jurisdictional waters—did not take into account future changes due to climate change to the extent that the definition of typical year was based on “a rolling average of past data.”