The Environmental Protection Agency calls wetlands “biological supermarkets” for the sheer abundance of food they supply to a broad range of species. Roughly 40 percent of all plants and animals rely on wetlands for some part of their lifecycle. These ecosystems also filter drinking water, blunt the force of flooding, and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide — functions that make them critical in efforts to combat climate change. But the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers are now moving to slash federal protections for the nation’s wetlands and streams, potentially leaving millions of acres of habitat in Illinois and the Midwest vulnerable to being dug up, filled in, or paved over.
At the heart of the proposal announced last week is a new, stricter definition to the long-debated legal term, “Waters of the United States,” the federal guidance that determines which bodies of water are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act. The proposal codifies a 2023 Supreme Court decision that limits federal protection to wetlands that are so inseparable from larger, relatively permanent bodies of water like streams, rive... Read more
