outreach
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Policy & Thought Leadership
Who protects Florida’s wetlands when federal protections fade?
In a guest column for the Tampa Bay Times, UF experts David Kaplan, Ph.D., director of the Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands, and Matthew Cohen, Ph.D., director of the UF Water Institute, explore how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision reshapes federal wetland protections — and why Florida’s existing water and wetland laws leave the state better positioned than most to respond.
Read the guest column here.
David Kaplan co-wrote an amicus curiae brief for the Supreme Court about a case regarding the Clean Water Act
David Kaplan, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment (ESSIE) within the University of Florida Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, along with a team of scientists, wrote an amicus curiae brief for the U.S. Supreme Court about a case regarding the Clean Water Act (CWA) that will have a lasting impact on public policy. An amicus curiae brief is a written submission to a court in which a person or organization can set out legal arguments and recommendations in a given case.
In April 2020, the Supreme Court declared, in a 6-3 ruling, that the CWA requires the federal government to regulate some groundwater pollutants that can navigate into waters such as oceans, rivers and streams.
