A month after the U.S. Supreme Court severely restricted the federal government’s power to oversee wetlands, the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature handed state agencies an order: Don’t give the ecologically crucial waters any more protection than newly weakened federal rules provide.
It might seem ironic that Republicans who often complain about the federal government would tether their state’s policy to one crafted in Washington, D.C. But this time, doing so meant slashing regulation and aligning themselves with builders, agriculture and other industries that have long sought weaker wetland safeguards.
For decades, federal court battles have pitted environmentalists who want the Clean Water Act to protect more wetlands against industries seeking regulatory rollbacks. The high court’s May 25 decision favoring Idaho landowners Michael and Chantell Sackett curtailed the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to limit wetlands destruction.
It put states at the center of future fights over wetlands that defend against floods, purify water and support wildlife, analysts say.
“The federal rollbacks are creating a vacuum. The states are going to have to step in and fill the void,” said Kim Delfino, president of an environmental consulting company and the former California director of Defenders of Wildlife.
The 5-4 ruling expanded the ability of farmers, homebuilders and other developers to dig up or fill wetlands, finding that the federal government had long overreached its authority in limiting such activities.
It’s the latest decision by a conservative-dominated court to limit environment laws and agency powers. With little appetite in a divided Congress to pass environmental laws, the outcome is likely to endure.
On Tuesday, the EPA and the Corps, which make and enforce federal wetlands rules, updated them to comply with the court’s decision involving the Sacketts, who disputed the need for an EPA permit to build a house near a lake.
The rule requires wetlands to be more clearly connected to other waters like oceans and rivers to be regulated — a major departure from decades-old federal policy.
Experts say it will take time to determine how the changes will play out in different regions.
“States will either enforce or adopt new protections. Others will roll back existing protections,” said Geoff Gisler, program director for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The focus will shift from the federal to the state government.”
Stripped in N.C.
North Carolina offers an early example.
The state — with its flat, sandy coastal plain rich in wetlands — began regulating ones isolated from larger surface waterways about 20 years ago after a previous court decision limited federal authority.
Urged by development interests in the steadily growing region, legislators voted in June to disallow state protection standards exceeding those of the EPA and Army Corps, overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.
The move stripped protections from more than half the wetlands in the flood-prone state, which is frequently hammered by hurricanes, said Grady McCallie, policy director for the North Carolina Conservation Network.
“We are going to see a lot of devastation,” said Gisler of the Southern Environmental Law Center. “People who bought new homes, moving to North Carolina to embrace the coastal lifestyle, at some point in the next few years are likely to see their homes flooded.”
