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Judge says water rule injunction is limited to 13 states

clean water rule-epaA federal judge in North Dakota said Friday that his temporary injunction blocking the EPA’s Clean Water Rule (WOTUS) does not apply nationwide, only to the 13 states involved in his initial ruling.

“On the one hand, there is a desirability for uniformity regarding a national rule with national application. On the other hand, there is the idea of respecting the decisions of other courts and other sovereign states,” District Judge Ralph Erickson wrote.

“Because there are competing sovereign interests and competing judicial rulings, the court declines to extend the preliminary injunction at issue beyond the entities actually before it.”

Judges in Georgia and West Virginia have declined to block the rule’s implementation, which took effect on August 28th.

The 13 states involved in the North Dakota lawsuit are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

In a recent interview with Brownfield, Nebraska attorney general Doug Peterson said the legal battle will now likely move to a federal judicial panel at an October 1st meeting in New York. That panel will decide whether to consolidate all of the lawsuits that have been filed against the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers.

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