Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
The Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News is the newsletter of the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund, published five times per year. The News is intended to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas among citizens and organizations working to protect aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes Basin.
Volume 14, Number 3 • Summer 2006
Supreme Court Decides High-Profile Wetland Regulations Case
By Wisconsin Wetlands Association, originally printed in
the June 27, 2006 issue of Wetland News!
"The more things change, the more
things stay the same," may be the best
way to describe the June 26, 2006
Supreme Court decision on whether the
Clean Water Act provided the Army Corps
of Engineers with the authority to regulate
tributaries to navigable water and
wetlands adjacent to those tributaries.
While no regulatory protections were
formally stripped, the decision does place a
higher burden on the Army Corps of
Engineers to prove there is a “significant
nexus” to navigable waters in order to
claim jurisdiction for tributaries and their
adjacent wetlands. The divided decision
also affirms that there are strong
differences of legal opinion on the
intended reach of the Clean Water Act
and that, ultimately, legislative clarification
is needed to guarantee full federal
protections for all of the nation’s waters.
Though it’s likely the significant nexus test
can be met for the types of tributaries and
adjacent wetlands under question in this
case, the decision will be subject to further
interpretation and potentially more legal
battles. Fortunately, any waters not
regulated under federal law in the
aftermath of this decision will still be
subject to regulatory oversight in the state
of Wisconsin.
That safeguard is built into Wisconsin Act
6, which passed the Wisconsin legislature
with unanimous bi-partisan support in
2001 and instituted state protections for
all wetlands left unprotected by current or
future federal actions or court decisions.
The Wisconsin legislature, (especially
former Representative (now Senator)
Neil Kedzie, and Senators Jim Baumgart,
Rob Cowles and Dale Schultz) deserves our
continued praise and appreciation for their
vision and foresight in the implementation
of this important wetland protection law.
Additional information on the decision
is available on the Association of State
Wetland Managers Inc.website:
http://www.aswm.org.
Wisconsin Wetlands Association
Ph: (608) 250.9971
E-mail: info@wiscwetlands.org
Website: http://www.wiscwetlands.org/
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