Three years on, a company operating manufacturing facilities across eight states is not navigating one post-Sackett compliance framework. They're navigating eight. Some of those states moved aggressively to fill the jurisdictional gap the ruling left. Some didn't touch it. Some are still writing the rules. And the federal picture — which was already narrower after Sackett — got a proposal in November 2025 to narrow it further.
For a single-site operator, that's a policy story. For a multi-site EHS team, it's a compliance management problem with real exposure attached to it. The difference between those two framings is where most companies are getting it wrong.
The Sackett decision narrowed the scope of federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction to waters with a "continuous surface connection" to traditionally navigable waters. Gone was the "significant nexus" standard that had governed federal jurisdiction for decades — a standard that, in practice, extended CWA coverage to a broad range of wetlands, tributaries, and seasonal streams connected to navigable waters even without a visible surface link.
The scale of what shifted is significant. An NRDC analysis using GIS modeling found that at least 19 million acres of wetlands — and under a more restrictive reading, potentially more than 70 million acres — lost federal protection following the ruling. EPA officials estimated that up to 63% of U.S. wetlands by acreage could be removed from federal jurisdiction. EPA and the Army Corps amended their WOTUS definition to conform to Sackett in August 2023, then proposed to narrow it further in November 2025.
For industrial operators, the practical effect has been uneven. Whether the ruling simplified your compliance picture or complicated it depends almost entirely on where your facilities sit.
The diversity of state responses to Sackett is the central compliance challenge that multi-site EHS teams are still underestimating. Here's where things stand:
Colorado became the first state to pass legislation specifically restoring protections to waters that lost federal coverage — the result of 45 stakeholder meetings and over a year of advocacy. The California State Water Board is increasingly using state-only Waste Discharge Requirements (WDRs) to regulate projects affecting waters of the state, often requiring a similar or longer permitting timeline compared to federal 401 certifications, which are governed by a strict 60-day to one-year review period. New Mexico passed similar legislation.
At the other end of the spectrum, North Carolina's 2023 Farm Act explicitly limited state regulatory authority to waters already protected under federal law. The state's own environmental agency estimated that roughly 2.5 million acres of North Carolina wetlands lost both federal and state protection as a result.
This is not a simplified picture. It is a patchwork that is actively expanding.
Here is a fact pattern worth sitting with. A manufacturing company has a facility in Texas and is planning a site expansion near a seasonal wetland. Under pre-Sackett federal rules, that wetland likely required Army Corps authorization. Texas has not stepped in to fill the gap left by the ruling — so the company's outside counsel advises that no permit appears to be required.
The risk is in that word "appears." If the Army Corps has not issued a formal jurisdictional determination confirming the wetland falls outside federal jurisdiction, and the company proceeds on assumption, any subsequent finding that the continuous surface connection standard is met creates enforcement exposure under both federal and potentially state law. EPA's enforcement guidelines don't offer safe harbor for jurisdictional guesswork.
Requesting a formal Army Corps jurisdictional determination before committing to a permitting strategy is not an abundance of caution. It's the only defensible position.
The most direct operational consequence of Sackett falls on wetlands permitting under Clean Water Act Section 404. Before the ruling, most activities disturbing wetlands connected to any tributary required Army Corps authorization. Post-Sackett, the Corps' jurisdictional reach is narrower — but the line between inside and outside federal jurisdiction isn't always clean, especially for facilities with water features in gray zones between seasonal flow and permanent connection.
The Army Corps has been working through a backlog of revised jurisdictional determinations since the ruling, which means longer turnaround times on new requests. In states where authority has effectively shifted from federal to state agencies, the process complexity has often increased, not decreased. California's state-only permitting route adds a mandatory three-month public process that the prior federal pathway didn't require.
What's left is a state-by-state map that keeps being redrawn. Colorado got its protective legislation through after a year of advocacy and 45 stakeholder meetings. California's state permitting process now takes a minimum of three months for projects that lost their federal hook. North Carolina went the other direction and stripped 2.5 million acres of wetlands of both federal and state protection in one legislative move.
None of that stops. Your portfolio keeps operating. The question isn't whether to build the compliance map — it's whether you're building it before or after someone asks why you didn't.
