The Clean Water Act ("the Act") has become fertile ground for extensive litigation in the federal courts. And no issue has been more prominent than the Act’s jurisdictional trigger term, "navigable waters," defined in the Act simply as “the waters of the United States"(“WOTUS”). This designation determines whether projects and other activities require federal permits to discharge into, dredge, or fill waters. The most recent addition to this series of cases, Sackett v. EPA, provides an updated definition of WOTUS and comes to us from Bonner County, Idaho. This article provides a brief background of the litigation before Sackett, the route by which Sackett arrived in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court’s updated definition of WOTUS as provided in Sackett’s majority opinion, and some thoughts and observations about what comes after Sackett.
