Whether or not Joni Mitchell thinks creeks are paradise, it became a lot easier to pave them over and put up a parking lot this year. “So in May, the US Supreme Court limited really the authority of the EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency, to regulate certain elements of our nation’s waterway,” Redgie Collins said. Collins is policy director at CalTrout. Streams, rivers, and wetlands of many forms, across the United States were dealt a serious blow this summer by the US Supreme Court in their ruling on the case of Sackett v EPA. “The federal backstops that were once present were really decimated by that made decision by the Supreme Court,” Collins said. This week, the EPA, their hands forced by the ruling, made official, rollbacks of protections for various “waters of the United States.”

Related article: 

• Brownstein: Here we WOTUS again