Clean Water Act - Waters Protected Under The CWA

Waters Protected Under The CWA

All waters with a "significant nexus" to "navigable waters" are covered under the CWA; however, the phrase "significant nexus" remains open to judicial interpretation and considerable controversy. The 1972 statute frequently uses the term "navigable waters," but also defines the term as "waters of the United States, including the territorial seas." Some regulations interpreting the 1972 law have included water features such as intermittent streams, playa lakes, prairie potholes, sloughs and wetlands as "waters of the United States." In the 2006 case Rapanos v. United States, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that the term "waters of the United States":

...includes only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water "forming geographic features" that are described in ordinary parlance as "streams ... oceans, rivers, lakes."