The story of the Clean Waters Act is a perfect example of the administrative state seizing total power that it was never intended to have.
The old 70's legislation protected "Navigable waters" also known as "Waters of the United States".
The Supreme Court ruled that "Waters refers only to"geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as 'streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes' " and to adjacent wetlands that are "indistinguishable" from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.
Wetlands are not navigable waters at all, but at least this curtails the escalating Obama/Biden abuses of the CWA. "The SCOTUS ruling states that,"to assert jurisdiction over an adjacent wetland under the CWA, a party must establish "First, that the adjacent ... 'water[s] of the United States'; and second, that the wetland has a continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the 'water' ends and the 'wetland' begins."
In short, the EPA can't simply claim that all water is connected and any water on your property will eventually make its way to a navigable body of the water and so it can tell you not to build on your own land.
"The EPA argues that 'waters' is 'naturally read to encompass wetlands' because the"presence of water is 'universally regarded as the most basic feature of wetlands.
"It is hard to see how the States' role in regulating water resources would remain 'primary' if the EPA had jurisdiction over anything defined by the presence of water.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/supreme-court-takes-away-epas-power-over-backyard-puddles/
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