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Congress opted to exempt several classes of such waters from federal control. § 67, 91 Stat. 1601, 33 U. S. C. § 1344(f). For example, the 1977 amendments expressly exclude from the Corps' regulatory power the discharge of fill material "for the purpose of construction or maintenance of farm or stock ponds or irrigation ditches, or the maintenance of drainage ditches," and "for the purpose of construction of temporary sedimentation basins on a construction site which does not include placement of fill material into the navigable waters." Ibid. The specific exemption of these waters from the Corps' jurisdiction indicates that the 1977 Congress recognized that similarly "isolated" waters not covered by the exceptions would fall within the statute's outer limits.
In addition to the enumerated exceptions, the 1977 amendments included a new section, § 404(g), which authorized the States to administer their own permit programs over certain nonnavigable waters. Section 404(g)(1) provides, in relevant part:
"The Governor of any State desiring to administer its own individual and general permit program for the discharge of dredged or fill material into the navigable waters (other than those waters which are presently used, or are susceptible to use in their natural condition or by reasonable improvement as a means to transport interstate or foreign commerce . . . , including wetlands adjacent thereto) within its jurisdiction may submit to the Administrator a full and complete description of the program it proposes to establish and administer under State law or under an interstate compact." 33 U. S. C. § 1344(g)(1).
Section 404(g)(1)'s reference to navigable waters "other than those waters which are presently used, or are susceptible to use," for transporting commerce and their adjacent wetlands appears to suggest that Congress viewed (and accepted) the Act's regulations as covering more than naviga-
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