After decades of advocacy by NCBA and its state affiliate partners, including KLA, to remove confusing and burdensome regulations on ranchers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a new proposed waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule that ensures only large bodies of water and their main tributaries fall under federal jurisdiction.

Past WOTUS rules issued under the Obama and Biden administrations placed small, isolated water features under federal regulation. Prairie potholes, playa lakes and even ditches that only carried water after large storms became regulated as if they were a large lake, river or ocean.

“NCBA has spent years fighting to protect cattle producers from excessive red tape. We went to the EPA, advocated on Capitol Hill and even took this issue all the way up to the Supreme Court to protect our members from federal overreach,” said NCBA President and Nebraska cattleman Buck Wehrbein.

NCBA filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA and received a major victory in 2023 that rolled back previous overreaching WOTUS rules. Since the Trump administration entered office at the start of 2025, NCBA has been working with newly appointed EPA officials to craft a new WOTUS rule that ends the uncertainty caused by previous regulations.

Mary-Thomas Hart, NCBA chief counsel, said this WOTUS announcement finally acknowledges the federal government should work to protect lakes, rivers and oceans, rather than regulating ditches and ponds on family farms and ranches. The revised rule will be published in the Federal Register soon, followed by a 45-day comment period. NCBA and KLA will submit comments to the agency, which will be considered before the rule is finalized.