National Cattlemen January 2026 | Page 7

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At the same time as NCBA’ s lawsuit, the U. S. Supreme Court was hearing another case called Sackett v. EPA. The case was started by a family who wanted to build a home, but the EPA blocked the project and said the land where the Sacketts wanted to build was a WOTUS. NCBA filed an amicus brief in the case explaining that WOTUS impacts not only homebuilding, but all the work undertaken by family farmers and ranchers.

In 2023, the Supreme Court accepted NCBA’ s arguments and issued a landmark ruling that to be a water of the U. S., a feature needs to have a“ continuous surface connection” to a larger“ relatively permanent” navigable water like a lake, river or ocean.

When the second Trump administration came into office, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made fixing WOTUS a priority.

“ Aligning EPA’ s interpretation of WOTUS with the Supreme Court’ s opinion in Sackett was a top priority from the beginning of 2025,” said NCBA Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart.“ Now, 10 months later, the EPA has proposed a new WOTUS rule that includes all of NCBA’ s recommendations.”

Trump’ s EPA-proposed rule would limit federal authority over small bodies of water. The proposal would prevent small ponds or creeks from being regulated as a WOTUS unless they directly connect to a large lake, river or ocean. This means isolated water features and ditches, stock ponds or creeks that only carry water after a rainstorm would not be federally regulated anymore.

The proposed rule would also maintain exemptions from WOTUS for prior converted cropland, waste treatment systems, and groundwater— all top priorities for cattle producers.

Additionally, the rule defines terms like“ relatively permanent” and“ tributary,” which were central legal terms in the Sackett case but have not been clearly defined by the federal government.

“ NCBA has spent years fighting to protect cattle producers from excessive red tape. We went to the EPA, advocated on Capitol Hill, and even took this issue all the way up to the Supreme Court to protect our members from federal overreach,” said NCBA President Buck Wehrbein when the rule was issued.“ We appreciate the EPA finally fixing previous WOTUS rules and supporting America’ s family farmers and ranchers.”

NCBA’ s grassroots members played a key role in shaping this positive new WOTUS rule. Over the years, cattle producers have sent thousands of letters to the EPA and Congress to share perspective on how to protect clean water without endangering the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers. NCBA members supported litigation against overreaching WOTUS rules and provided real-world examples of WOTUS problems which became part of NCBA’ s brief to the Supreme Court.

“ This new WOTUS announcement finally acknowledges that the federal government should work to protect lakes, rivers and oceans, rather than regulating ditches and ponds on family farms and ranches,” Hart said.“ This is a positive step forward and NCBA will be providing comments in support of the rule to help it become law.”

To learn more about NCBA’ s work on WOTUS and all policy issues, please visit ncba. org.

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