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Notes -
The definition of wetlands has never been the relevant prong, and the OP you're stuffing words into never used the term and may not even have been aware of it. The borders of "navigable waters of the United States" is what determines the EPA's regulatory authority here, as made clear by the literal first lines of the decision.
No, because simply having "wetlands" or "waters" is (allegedly) not sufficient for coverage under the EPA's CWA claims. From the opinion:
wetlands had “a significant nexus to a traditional navigable water.”6 A “significant nexus” was said to exist when “ ‘wetlands, either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity’ ” of those waters. 2007 Guidance 8 (emphasis added). In looking for evidence of a “significant nexus,” field agents were told to consider a wide range of open-ended hydrological and ecological factors.
The EPA claims that these lands counted as "navigable waters of the United States" for CWA jurisdictional purposes because they were both wetlands and had a "significant nexus" to "non-navigable tributaries". And, notably, the court opinion here assumes that they are "wetlands" for CWA purposes. But even the relevance of a "significant nexus" is pulled directly from Rapanos, well after the 1980s, nor is it the sole change to definitions of "navigable waters of the United States".
((Nor is "wetlands" necessary: see the 2003 Guidance's [Tributaries of Tributaries] rule.))
In this case, the EPA's position required "navigable waters" to commute across several steps. To take the summary from the opinion:
EPA evaluation of the Sackett property's CWA status depends not just on the lot being a wetlands, but also that it is "adjacent" to a tributary despite the presence of a wide road in the middle, and that it matters that the tributary feeds a non-navigable creek. A lot of these rules had changed, and that doesn't just matter for the Sacketts.
Trivially "all waters adjacent to a water" and "wetlands adjacent to waters" is actually a pretty big difference!
Beyond that, the definition of "adjacent" changed, too, and remember that adjacency was required. Both definitions use "bordering, contiguous, or neighboring", but the 2015 version specifically said adjacency did not require they be "located laterally", and defined "neighboring" to include being within 100 feet of a high water marker (1500 feet in 100-year floodplains); these components were totally absent from the 1986 version. And that's just that one prong.
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