Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act: Cutting Through the Rhetoric on the Proposed Rule

On March 25, 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to revise their rules defining which water bodies are protected by the Clean Water Act. As with so much of our public discourse, the reactions from across the political spectrum have included a lot of overheated rhetoric with little regard for the changes that the proposal would actually make.