The Rundown
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum champions the administration’s energy development aspirations at the Western Governors’ Association meeting.
- Army Corps and EPA propose restricting federal oversight of wetlands and ephemeral streams.
- Justice Department levies a minimal fine against an Iowa feedlot for polluting a waterway.
- EPA delegates permitting authority to certain states for coal waste, carbon dioxide injection wells.
- Army Corps analyzes another drilling option for proposed Line 5 oil pipeline tunnel.
And lastly, EPA announces water infrastructure financing deals with five cities.
“If Department of Interior was standalone, it would be the largest balance sheet in the world of any company. Pick the largest companies in the world. Pick Aramco, ExxonMobil. Pick the biggest tech companies. They don’t come anywhere close. Interior [has] 500-plus million acres of surface, 700-plus million acres of subsurface. Over 3.2 billion acres of offshore. Those assets included in there dwarf the debt that we have as a country. But it takes us to have the policies to develop those resources and turn that abundance of resources we have into real assets.” – Doug Burgum, Interior secretary, speaking at the Western Governors’ Association meeting on November 20.
By the Numbers
$20,000: Civil penalty levied against Wynja Feedlot for Clean Water Act violations related to its cattle feeding-operation in Orange City, Iowa. The penalty is part of a consent decree negotiated with the Justice Department. The violations are related to nutrient-rich wastewater draining and spilling into a tributary of the West Branch of the Floyd River without a permit. The law states that Wynja was eligible for penalties up to $68,445 per day for each violation. The company successfully argued that it had “limited ability” to pay a penalty. It will, however, build structures to control its wastewater and obtain a permit.
5: Cities that will be receiving water infrastructure loans through the EPA’s WIFIA program. The recipients include Joliet, Illinois, which will receive an additional $87 million to assist its transition from groundwater to Lake Michigan. This is the third WIFIA loan, totaling $395 million, for Joliet’s project.
In context: Chicago Suburbs, Running Out of Water, Will Tap Lake Michigan
News Briefs
Interior Secretary Addresses Western Governors
Interior Sec. Doug Burgum spoke at the Western Governors’ Association meeting on November 20 in Arizona.
Burgum, mostly talking about fossil fuel development, said little directly about water in his speech or in a Q&A with the governors.
The AI race, he said, means energy addition, not an energy transition. The latter generally refers to carbon-free energy sources.
About stalled Colorado River negotiations he said that more high-level pressure was needed. His office could provide that, but publicly he deflected to the states.
“The big one, of course, is the Colorado basin,” Burgum said. “And as we discussed, I think when we’re going to get to a spot where we’re going to have to get governors involved and this is again, smaller pie, bigger demand. So it’s going to take some innovation and some collaboration to do that. I’m optimistic.”
Burgum, recalling a favored concept, said the western states would have to rely on innovation, especially in reducing irrigation water use. “So it’s like we don’t have to give up ag to do data centers. We could do both with innovation.”
Re-Re-Redefining WOTUS
The U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers proposed new rules that would redefine which waterbodies are regulated under the Clean Water Act, potentially leaving millions of acres of wetlands and streams across the country without federal protection.
The Clean Water Act applies to Waters of the United States. What is meant by that phrase has been litigated for decades. Each administration since the Obama years has written its own interpretation.
Owing to a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the agencies are taking another swing at it. And in deference to the court’s language, they are cutting its scope.
The new revisions will leave seasonal, ephemeral, or isolated surface waters particularly vulnerable. To remain federally protected, tributaries would need to connect directly to larger navigable waters or via waterways with “predictable and consistent flow,” while wetlands “must touch a jurisdictional water and hold surface water for a requisite duration year after year.”
These rigid standards, critics of the new rules say, are incompatible with both the natural movement of water across many landscapes, and increasingly erratic precipitation patterns.
According to a Natural Resources Defense Council analysis, these regulatory changes would expose between 38 million and 70 million acres of wetlands to pollution, filling, and development.
Public comments on the proposal are due January 5, 2026. Submit them via www.reguations.gov using docket number EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0322.
EPA Defers to States
Many environmental laws allow the EPA to delegate permitting authority within their borders to states and tribes.
The agency completed several such primacy applications recently. North Dakota has been handed control of overseeing the toxic wastes produced from burning coal for electricity.
Texas, meanwhile, will be in charge of permitting carbon dioxide injection wells.
Studies and Reports
Army Corps Supplements Line 5 Review
to its review of the environmental impacts of a proposed Line 5 tunnel across the Straits of Mackinac, the Army Corps is analyzing another construction option: horizontal directional drilling.
Line 5 is the controversial oil pipeline owned by the Canadian firm Enbridge that runs on the lakebed between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The new 3.6 mile tunnel would be drilled into bedrock.
The horizontal drilling option was not analyzed in the environmental impact statement published in May because it was not deemed technically feasible. That report instead assessed a tunnel boring machine. The Army Corps says that documentation recently provided by Enbridge has changed that conclusion and horizontal drilling could be analyzed.
Public comments on the supplement are being accepted through December 5, less than two weeks away. The Corps will hold a virtual public meeting on December 3. Register here.
On the Radar
Army Corps Advisory Committee Meeting
On December 3 and 4, the Western Water Cooperative Committee, which consults with the Army Corps on water projects in the western states, will hold a public meeting in Bismarck, North Dakota.
The agenda is to discuss operation of Corps projects in a way that does not impede state water rights.
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