By Madeline Heim, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout; Elise Plunk, Louisiana Illuminator; Jess Savage, WNIJ; and Phillip Powell, Arkansas Times
Many acres of wetlands across the vast Mississippi River basin would lose federal protection under a new rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Agricultural and builders’ groups have called it a win for private property owners. Environmental groups warn that it will exacerbate costly challenges like flooding that already plague the river and its tributaries.
The new rule, proposed Nov. 17, is the latest in a convoluted, decades-long fight over which streams and wetlands qualify as “Waters of the United States” and thus are regulated by the federal government under the Clean Water Act. Environmental advocates claim more expansive federal protections are needed to preserve the country’s natural resources, while some farmers and homebuilders argue the government is overstepping its authority to control how they use their land.
A landmark 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case, Sackett v. EPA, used a narrow definition to determine which wetlands get federal protections. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin promised earlier this year that the agency would adjust its definitions to comply. The proposed rule delivers on that promise.
The proposal will be open for public comment for 45 days before it moves forward.
Wetland advocates are still parsing details of the proposal but say they’re concerned with the impacts it could have.
“This does not help any of the issues the basin is facing,” said Kelly McGinnis, executive director of One Mississippi, a group that advocates for the river. “Whether we’re talking water quality and pollution, trying to mitigate the impact of the more frequent floods and droughts we’re seeing — removing even more wetland protections … is devastating.”
States along Mississippi River have varied wetlands protections
In Sackett v. EPA, a couple asked the Supreme Court to restrict federal regulations of wetlands so they could build a home on their northern Idaho property. The court ruled in their favor, saying only wetlands that have a continuous surface connection with another r protected water body — such as a permanent, navigable waterway — qualify for protections under the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act protects the “Waters of the United States” but it does not define them. That has fallen to the EPA, which has changed its definition repeatedly since the law’s passing in 1972. The murkiness and scope of the definitions has long frustrated stakeholders.
In a news release, Zeldin said the new EPA rule follows the Sackett decision closely, granting protections only to wetlands that touch another protected water body and have visible water for at least part of the year.
Experts say a wetland is doing work even if it doesn’t usually have water in it or is isolated. The benefits of wetlands lie in their ability to relieve flooding, purify water, mitigate drought and provide wildlife habitat. Experts say in an era of increased storms, droughts and floods wrought by climate change, they’re needed now more than ever.
Many groups have attempted to predict how many wetlands will lose protections following the Sackett decision, but the actual impact is yet to be understood. What is clear is that with more limited federal regulation, states will have different rules governing wetlands.
Along the Mississippi River, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Mississippi have wetland protections that go beyond the Clean Water Act, a Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk analysis found. Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas do not have more protective wetland laws on the books. Louisiana extends state protections to its coastal wetlands, but not inland ones.
And state laws are still moving targets. Tennessee lawmakers, for example, voted this year to roll back protections that had been in place since the 1970s requiring developers and landowners to seek state permission and pay for mitigation before draining or altering isolated wetlands. In Illinois, where researchers have estimated about 72% of the state’s remaining wetlands could lose federal protections under Sackett, lawmakers have drafted legislation beefing up their state’s regulations, though they have not passed it, yet.
There are also unanswered questions about how the Sackett decision would affect areas along the Mississippi and other rivers where the river’s main channel is separated from the floodplain by built levees — a concern Justice Brett Kavanaugh mentioned directly in his concurring opinion on the case.
Wetland-rich Louisiana, in particular, relies on manmade flood control structures to try and hold back floodwaters from low-lying communities. State legislation passed in 2025 made wetland areas behind levees ineligible for state protection.
Should those areas lose federal protection, it opens them up to “a ton of risky development,” said Haley Gentry, assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans.
“The reason to not build in a wetland shouldn’t have been, ‘Oh, you have to get this pesky federal permit,’” Gentry said. “It’s that wetlands flood … this is not creating more affordable housing, if you’re building risky homes in flood zones.”
Mississippi River basin wetlands are already in trouble
Groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members faced the potential of hefty fines if they altered federally regulated wetlands, have reacted positively to Zeldin’s proposed rule.
The groups have complained that the previous definition, which was published in early 2023 and protected a broader swath of wetlands, left farmers confused about things like what constitutes a continuous surface connection between a wetland and a water body, said Courtney Briggs, senior director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
“The fact that this administration has come in and given definitions to those terms already improves the situation significantly,” Briggs said. “It gives our farmers more confidence in using their own land.”
Environmental groups, however, say that there will be consequences of the administration’s effort to make it easier for people to drain and fill wetlands for their own purposes.
“They have, in this rule-making, completely ignored the costs of fewer wetlands and more polluted water to communities around the country,” said Mark Sabath, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The Mississippi River basin is home to many different types of wetlands, from Minnesota’s peatlands to the swamps of the Gulf South. In some places, they carry economic benefits of their own — like in Arkansas, where they provide crucial habitat for waterfowl that hunters spend big money to shoot.
According to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 132,000 acres of wetland across the basin were lost between 2009 and 2019, the equivalent of about 100,000 football fields.
The last time EPA was reworking its definition of the“Waters of the United States,” in 2022, the Mississippi River Collaborative, a consortium of environmental groups focused on the river, wrote that the link between continued destruction of wetlands and increased nutrient pollution, a persistent problem for the Mississippi River, “is very clear.”
“One cannot protect waters like the Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers and the Gulf of Mexico without protecting wetlands and small streams,” they wrote.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Mississippi River basin wetlands, EPA wetlands protection, federal wetlands regulation, environmental policy, wetland conservation, ecosystem protection, wetland loss, EPA rule proposal, river basin ecosystems, environmental protection
#Wetlands #MississippiRiver #EPA #EnvironmentalProtection #WetlandConservation #EcosystemHealth #RiverBasin #ClimateChange #EnvironmentalPolicy #SaveOurWetlands
