SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Despite some hard-won concessions, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s attempt to influence federal Clean Water Act policy haven’t produced the desired result. Over the past year, the organization has tried to temper the scope of the Biden Administration’s new “Waters of the U.S.” regulation, which it believes poses grave risks to agriculture.

Now that federal regulators have finalized the WOTUS rule they proposed a year ago, the Farm Bureau is disappointed with the scant revisions made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Unfortunately, the rule is really bad for farmers and landowners,” said Courtney Briggs, AFBF’s senior director of government affairs. “It greatly expands the government’s reach over private property.”

“It seems the EPA has ignored much of what we had to say,” said Zippy Duvall, AFBF’s president.

The federal government’s definition of WOTUS affects which water bodies are subject to costly and complicated permit requirements under the Clean Water Act.

Landowners need such permits to alter traditionally navigable waterways, such as rivers or lakes, as well as associated wetlands.

“It’s not just the cost of the permit,” Briggs said. “It’s the cost of delay, it’s the cost of litigation.”

According to AFBF and other critics, the Biden Administration’s rule endows federal agencies with expansive authority over property that contains water only sporadically.

The Farm Bureau is grateful the government clarified and broadened certain exceptions, such as for stockwater ponds and “prior converted croplands” — wetlands converted to crop production before water protection laws were passed.

However, the decision to forge ahead with a largely unchanged WOTUS definition has again “muddied the water” about what’s regulated, Zippy Duvall, AFBF president, said.

The sting is especially sharp because such confusion had been dispelled by the Trump administration’s clear-cut boundaries, he said.

“This new rule is a rollback of the common sense approach of the previous rule,” Duvall said.

Such vague limits can result in inconsistent interpretations among federal agencies, effectively forcing growers to hire lawyers and specialists, he said.

“If our federal government can’t understand their own regulations, how can they expect the American people to?” Duvall asked.

Of course, drastic changes to the scope of WOTUS are nothing new. The executive branch has repeatedly overhauled the regulation over the years, said Briggs, AFBF’s senior government affairs director.

“We’ve been ping-ponging between definitions with each change in administration,” she said.

Though the Farm Bureau is dissatisfied with the newest version of WOTUS, it’s not as far-reaching as the Obama administration’s 2015 rule, Briggs said.

The Biden administration has expanded certain exceptions, but some seemingly contradictory regulatory language has raised questions about enforcement, she said.

“An exception is only as good as it is clear,” Briggs said.

However, farmers may not have to wait until the next presidential administration for relief, she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing an Idaho wetlands dispute and will likely rule on the Clean Water Act’s scope within six months.

Based on its conservative-leaning makeup, the nation’s highest court is expected to issue a landowner-friendly decision, Briggs said.

“It certainly can provide the clarity that we need,” she said.

Under the current legal standard, a wetland can be regulated if it has a “significant nexus” with a traditionally navigable water.

In their interpretations of “significant nexus,” the Obama and Biden administrations deliberately adopted an ambiguous definition of which waters are regulated, Briggs said.

“They want to keep those terms loose to move them in any direction they want to move them,” she said.

If a majority of Supreme Court justices rule as anticipated, though, such a sweeping view of WOTUS won’t be possible, Briggs said.

“There is a good chance they will shoot down the significant nexus test,” she said.

With such a fundamental change soon likely, the timing of the new WOTUS regulation defies logic, Briggs said. Federal regulators will probably be forced to further revise the definition, which may still be subject to new litigation.

“It’s a waste of government resources and it will create a lot of confusion on the ground,” she said.