A federal judge has shot down a North Carolina landowner’s latest attempt to stop the Biden administration from enforcing federal protections for wetlands.
Robert White, a businessman and landowner whom EPA has accused of polluting protected wetlands without a federal permit, is “unlikely to succeed” in his lawsuit challenging the administration’s wetlands regulation, Judge Terrence Boyle wrote in a brief order.
White is suing to stop EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers from regulating wetlands that sit adjacent to rivers, lakes andother navigable waters under the Clean Water Act, including those on his property in eastern North Carolina.
He has argued that such “adjacent” wetlands should not be protected federally following a sweeping Supreme Court decision last year, Sackett v. EPA, which dramatically reduced the scope of the landmark environmental law.
