I was being facetious, of course. Most permit applications do not end up in court cases, let alone in the Supreme Court. But that is the very case I was referring to.

However, that case did not narrow the definition of the phrase “waters of the United States” at all. No, it merely prevented the EPA from widening it over time. Keep in mind that the Sackett’s property does not actually contain a wetland or navigable waterway; it just has a ditch that occasionally channels rainwater away from their lawn. This returns us to the definition that the EPA decided on in the 1970s and 1980s.

> However, that case did not narrow the definition of the phrase “waters of the United States” at all. No, it merely prevented the EPA from widening it over time.

SpaceX had requested a wetland reclamation permit from USACE for expansion of their launch site in Texas; in 2022 (a year before SCOTUS decided this case) they withdrew the application [0], exactly why is unclear, but it seems they concluded that bureaucratic process was unlikely to produce the result they wanted. Possibly, under this decision, the wetland (tidal flats actually) they wanted to reclaim is no longer “waters of the United States”, in which case they might be able to go ahead without the permit. If that’s the case, then in practice the definition really has been narrowed

[0] https://www.tpr.org/environment/2022-04-07/army-corps-of-eng...

That’s a sound pragmatic decision, considering that the Sackett case was filed in 2008 and only got through the Supreme Court in 2023.