Syllabus
Under the agencies’ current rule, traditional navigable waters, interstate waters, and the territorial seas, as well as their tributaries and adjacent wetlands, are waters of the United States. See 88 Fed. Reg. 3143. So too are any “[i]ntrastate lakes and ponds, streams, or wetlands” that either have a continuous surface connection to categorically included waters or have a significant nexus to interstate or traditional navigable waters. Id., at 3006, 3143. Finding a significant nexus continues to require consideration of a list of open-ended factors. Ibid. Finally, the current rule returns to the agencies’ longstanding definition of “adjacent.” Ibid. Pp. 6–12.
(2) Landowners who even negligently discharge pollutants into navigable waters without a permit potentially face severe criminal and civil penalties under the Act. As things currently stand, the agencies maintain that the significant-nexus test is sufficient to establish jurisdiction over “adjacent” wetlands. By the EPA’s own admission, nearly all waters and wetlands are potentially susceptible to regulation under this test, putting a staggering array of landowners at risk of criminal prosecution for such mundane activities as moving dirt. Pp. 12–14.
(b) Next, the Court considers the extent of the CWA’s geographical reach. Pp. 14–22.
(1) To make sense of Congress’s choice to define “navigable waters” as “the waters of the United States,” the Court concludes that the CWA’s use of “waters” encompasses “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water ‘forming geographic[al] features’ that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.’ ” Rapanos, 547 U. S., at 739 (plurality opinion). This reading follows from the CWA’s deliberate use of the plural “waters,” which refers to those bodies of water listed above, and also helps to align the meaning of “the waters of the United States” with the defined term “navigable waters.” More broadly, this reading accords with how Congress has employed the term “waters” elsewhere in the CWA—see, e.g., 33 U. S. C. §§1267(i)(2)(D), 1268(a)(3)(I)—and in other laws—see, e.g., 16 U. S. C. §§745, 4701(a)(7). This Court has understood CWA’s use of “waters” in the same way. See, e.g., Riverside Bayview, 474 U. S., at 133; SWANCC, 531 U. S., at 168–169, 172.
