The Environmental Protection Agency has posted a new blog post about the Clean Water Rule, previously known as the Waters of the United States rule, that the agency says “addresses some misinformation that’s been out there.”

Among the points made by EPA Water Office official Ken Kopocis in the blog are the following:

• “The rule does not expand the waters covered — in fact, it will actually reduce the scope of waters protected by the Clean Water Act compared to the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
• The rule does not regulate most ditches. It excludes farm and stock ponds, and grassed waterways and does not regulate groundwater, shallow subsurface flows, or tile drains. It does not make changes to current policies on irrigation or water transfers or apply to erosion in a field.
• The Clean Water Rule does not regulate land use or affect private property rights.
• The features we use to define “tributaries” in the rule — bed, banks, and ordinary high water mark — are exactly the same features used today by the agencies to determine the presence of a tributary, but without the regulatory certainty of being in the rule. This reliance on these same features always used by the agencies, but now codified in the Clean Water Rule, will ensure the result will not be an expansion of jurisdiction but instead more predictability and consistency.
• The rule does not place the onus on the landowner to prove that their ditch qualifies for an exclusion or exemption. Quite simply, it is the responsibility of the Army Corps or EPA to prove a water is covered by the Clean Water Act; it is not the responsibility of a landowner to prove it is not a protected water.”

• EPA Connect — The Facts About the Clean Water Rule and Agriculture