By GREG WALCHER | GregWalcher.com
There are at least 25 different types of wrenches commonly found in toolboxes. There are box-end, open-end, combination, and crescent wrenches. For particular jobs, one might reach for a lug wrench, basin wrench, oil filter wrench, or an impact, flare-nut, strap, chain, or torque wrench. Like most people, I also have socket wrenches, Allen wrenches, and pipe wrenches.
My dad taught us that every job is easier with the right tools, but he also knew there were several ways to accomplish any task. If one wrench won’t work, you try a different wrench. That is exactly what environmental industry lawyers, and their government allies, are doing in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sackett v. EPA.
That is the case in which the Court finally declared once and for all that “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) does not include every creek, pond, ditch, puddle, and parking lot drain in the country. EPA spent almost a decade trying to use WOTUS as the regulatory tool for a vast expansion of federal jurisdiction, to include virtually all activity that touches any water, even though the Clean Water Act, from which the WOTUS definition originates, explicitly applies to America’s major rivers, bays, and oceans – “navigable waters.”