States’ to-do lists just got a little longer: Decide how — or whether — to oversee building, planting and water quality in some wetland areas.

Last month, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down federal protections for wetlands covering tens of millions of acres across the country, leaving no regulation of those areas in nearly half the states.

The court’s narrowing of the Clean Water Act has left some states scrambling to enact their own safeguards and others questioning whether their regulators can handle the workload without their federal partners.

Other states, though, see the loss of federal oversight as an opportunity to roll back corresponding state laws at the behest of developers and farmers, who argue such regulations are overly burdensome.

“State protections are not all the same,” said Jim McElfish, senior research and policy adviser with the Environmental Law Institute. “It’s going to be up to the states to fill the gap, and they might act […]