A group of state attorneys general are pushing back against a federal court decision last week reinstating the controversial Obama-era Waters of the U.S. rule.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, joined by the attorneys general from Louisiana and Mississippi, announced Thursday that they filed a motion in the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, asking for a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the WOTUS rule, as it is known.
The motion framed the rule as an illegal overreach by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.
The district court of South Carolina ordered the Trump EPA last week to reverse its effort to delay the water rule while the agency works on a replacement.
“The WOTUS rule infringes on the states’ ability to regulate their own natural resources, including ponds, puddles and streams on private property, and poses a substantial burden to property owners whose land would be subject to new EPA regulations,” Paxton said in a statement. “We’re asking the district court to take immediate action to prevent enforcement of the unlawful rule.”
The motion asks the court to look at two options: Either issuing a nationwide injunction stopping WOTUS, or issuing an alternative order that blocks the rule in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
The South Carolina ruling applied to 26 states in which district courts have not halted the regulation.
Paxton’s office said that, while the district courts in North Dakota and Georgia had acted to block WOTUS’ enforcement in 24 states, the rule remains in effect in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and other states not covered by the previous injunctions.
Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a finalized regulation in February delaying the Waters of the U.S. rule until 2020 to allow the agency to go through a process of rewriting a more modest version of it.
