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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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No, 40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s.

That helps clarify part of what I saw about the case (the Reason video from six months ago) where the EPA also demanded they plant wetland plants on the land where none such plants grew. Ridiculous.

To be fair, a lot of wetlands plants are pretty hardy, if only because the definition is so expansive. You're probably thinking cattails or mangroves that require regular inundation to thrive, but the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers includes a broader framework of plants that merely require highly hydrated soils, including some dogwoods and willows.

That frame of logic was part of the reasoning some previous short-lived attempts at very expansive definitions of 'wetlands' (eg, in the late 1980s, must have seven consecutive days water no more than 18 inches underground).

That would definitely make my entire town wetlands

That reminds me that I need to uproot the "wetland grasses" on my land that are growing in the middle of all the other stuff.