1/4/26 – January 5, 2026 is the last day to file public comments on a proposed new definition of Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS). The new definition could eliminate federal protections for roughly 80% of the wetlands in the United States.
A regulatory impact analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that approximately 70 – 75 million acres of wetlands would no longer be protected, including approximately three quarters of the 3.1 million acres of wetlands in Texas.
70 – 75 million acres represent an area roughly the size of Arizona, Nevada, or Colorado and almost twice the size of Florida. And it’s more than 175 times larger than Houston.
Under the new definition, only wetlands with a relatively permanent, continuous surface connection to navigable Waters of the U.S. would enjoy federal protection. That pretty much limits federal protection only to swamps that directly border major rivers and streams.
Texas does not have its own regulatory protection program for inland forested wetlands such as those common in the San Jacinto river basin.
How Wetlands Reduce Flooding
Wetlands reduce flood risk by storing, slowing, spreading, and dissipating floodwaters before those waters reach downstream channels, neighborhoods, and infrastructure. They act as natural detention basins, providing temporary storage during heavy rainfalls. They fill first, reducing the volume and rate of water entering streams.
Wetlands also contain dense vegetation that slows runoff, reduces erosion, and minimizes channel scouring downstream.
They spread floods laterally across wide areas. This directly reduces flood heights, velocities and structural damage.
Many wetlands disconnect runoff from channels; they intercept it before it ever reaches streams or bayous. But when developers fill in and pave over wetlands, runoff becomes directly connected. Floods peak higher and faster.
The loss of federal protection for wetlands will shift flood mitigation costs downstream from developers to the public, and from no-cost natural solutions to high-cost engineered solutions, such as regional detention basins, channel widening, lining channels with concrete, bridge widening, dikes, reservoirs, etc.
Flood control districts, reservoir operators, and watershed planners consistently view wetlands as critical flood-risk infrastructure, even when not labeled as such.
Bottom line:
Wetlands reduce flooding by doing four things simultaneously:
- Storing water
- Slowing flow
- Spreading out flood waters
- Delaying aggregation of floodwaters.
Lose enough wetlands in a watershed and floods become higher, faster, and more destructive, even if rainfall statistics stay the same.
How You Can Help Save Wetlands
Protest the proposed changes by cutting and pasting the text between the two lines below. Don’t forget to add your name and contact info at the end of the entry form. The deadline for filing a public comment is Monday, January 5, 2025.
Re: the proposed 2025 definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) as it relates to wetlands the Lake Houston watershed.
This represents one of the most hydraulically and sediment-sensitive locations in Southeast Texas. The wetlands and floodplain features here perform essential functions that directly affect downstream flood risk, sediment transport, and the long-term storage capacity of Lake Houston. Narrowing federal jurisdiction over these wetlands would have costly consequences that the proposal does not adequately analyze.
1. Wetlands upstream function as critical flood-storage infrastructure
Wetlands upstream operate as distributed flood-storage and flow-attenuation systems. During ordinary wet-season events, these wetlands temporarily store runoff, slow overland flow, and desynchronize flood peaks arriving from multiple tributaries. This attenuation function is particularly important at confluences, where coincident peak flows dramatically increase flood stage and velocity.
Loss or fragmentation of these wetlands will not merely redistribute water locally; it will shift flood risk downstream into into the Lake Houston area. Engineered detention required at individual development sites does not replicate this basin-scale function and cannot offset cumulative wetland losses across multiple upstream parcels.
2. Wetland loss directly increases sediment delivery to Lake Houston
The wetlands upstream serve as sediment traps. During flood events, reduced velocities across wetland landscapes allow suspended sediment to settle before reaching the active channel network. This function is especially important for a lake losing storage capacity that supplies water for 2 million people.
When wetlands are filled, drained, or disconnected, sediment that was previously stored on the landscape is instead delivered downstream. The result is accelerated shoaling of channels and increased sediment deposition in Lake Houston, reducing conveyance, increasing flood stages for equivalent flows, and shortening the functional life of public infrastructure.
3. Loss of storage capacity in Lake Houston imposes real and recurring public costs
Sedimentation has already measurably reduced the effective storage and conveyance capacity of Lake Houston. Maintaining that capacity has required repeated large-scale dredging projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars, funded largely by federal and state appropriations.
Upstream wetland loss increases the frequency and scale of these dredging needs. Each acre of wetland lost upstream effectively shifts long-term sediment-management costs from private land conversion decisions to the public. The proposed WOTUS definition does not quantify or even acknowledge this cost transfer.
4. Federal withdrawal from jurisdiction coincides with a pullback in mitigation funding
As federal jurisdiction over wetlands contracts, so too does the availability of federal mitigation and restoration funding that historically offset unavoidable impacts. This includes reduced applicability of Clean Water Act Section 404 mitigation and fewer mitigation-bank credits.
The combined effect is a double loss: fewer protected wetlands and fewer resources to restore or compensate for their loss. This creates a structural funding gap that local governments cannot realistically fill.
5. The proposed definition fails to address cumulative watershed-scale impacts
The proposal’s emphasis on parcel-level “continuous surface connection” tests ignores cumulative impacts across sub-basins. In the Lake Houston area, hundreds of small wetland losses—each individually deemed non-jurisdictional—can collectively produce measurable increases in flood peaks, sediment loads, and public costs.
The agencies should evaluate jurisdiction and impacts at the basin scale rather than relying on binary, site-specific connectivity tests that are not representative of watershed hydrology.
Requested revisions
I respectfully request that the agencies revise the proposed definition to:
- Retain federal jurisdiction over wetlands that provide flood-storage and sediment-attenuation functions upstream of relatively permanent waters and reservoirs, even where surface connectivity is seasonal rather than continuous year-round.
- Treat wetlands upstream of dams and reservoirs as integral components of the same hydrologic system, rather than as disconnected features.
- Evaluate and disclose cumulative impacts to flood risk, sedimentation, reservoir capacity, and public dredging costs resulting from reduced wetland protection.
- Address the loss of federal mitigation and restoration funding that accompanies jurisdictional withdrawal and explain how watershed-scale impacts will be managed in its absence.
Absent these changes, the proposed definition risks increasing downstream flood damages, accelerating sedimentation in Lake Houston, and shifting long-term infrastructure costs from private development to the public.
Cut and paste the text between the lines above and submit it to:
Regulations.gov to Docket No. EPA-HQ-OW-2025-0322.
Please DO IT NOW. DON’T DELAY.
For More Info
If you wish to compose your own letter, say for other areas, the following resources may help:
Posted by Bob Rehak on 1/4/26
3050 Days since Hurricane Harvey
