WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the Senate didn’t garner enough votes to override President Obama’s veto of a bill that would have stopped the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final water rule, The Hill reports.

Senate Republicans had vowed to overturn the controversial Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule that gives the agency authority over less significant waterways, such as wetlands and streams. Instead, only 52 senators voted to override the president’s veto, despite the fact that three Democrats (Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia) joined the Republicans. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure, the only one to break party ranks.

Republicans strongly objected to the water rule language, arguing that the EPA could interpret it to mean the agency had authority over nearly all land in the United States. This would mean that anything that could change or harm the land, such as digging ditches, would require a federal permit, as stated in the Clean Water Act.

“The administration has tried to spin WOTUS as some ‘clean-water measure,’ but a bipartisan majority of Congress understands it’s really a federal power grab clumsily masquerading as one,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) yesterday. “WOTUS would grant federal bureaucrats dominion over nearly every piece of land that touches a pothole, ditch or puddle. It could force the Americans who live there to ask federal bureaucrats for permission to do just about anything with their own property.”

The agency has done nothing to enforce WOTUS as a federal court halted any implementation of the rule while those opposing it, which include developers and farmers, took the matter to court. Read more about this controversial issue and the NACS position in NACS Magazine.