You request a wetlands determination by contacting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district office for the county where your land sits and submitting a jurisdictional determination (JD) request, ideally backed by a wetland delineation. The Corps issues either a non-binding preliminary JD or a binding, appealable approved JD, valid five years, though neither one authorizes construction or fill by itself.
Why would a landowner request a JD in the first place?
Most requests come from someone who needs a settled answer before money changes hands or a permit application gets filed, not from idle curiosity about a parcel’s ecology. A pending sale is the most common trigger: a buyer’s lender or title company wants documentation that the buildable portion of the lot isn’t encumbered by federal wetlands before they’ll fund or insure the deal, and “probably fine” from a listing description doesn’t satisfy that requirement. Someone planning to build, grade, clear timber, or place fill needs to know before they apply for a local building or grading permit, since a county won’t sign off on a septic system or foundation footprint that turns out to sit inside water the Corps considers jurisdictional. And a landowner who’s been told informally by a county planner or a real estate agent that “there might be wetlands back there” based on nothing more than a wet-looking aerial photo has a real incentive to get a documented answer rather than make decisions off a guess. In every one of these situations, the request is driven by a specific decision that’s waiting on the answer, which is also why it pays to start the process with real lead time rather than during the final weeks of a transaction.
What’s the difference between a preliminary and an approved jurisdictional determination?
A preliminary JD is a working estimate the Corps will use for planning purposes, while an approved JD is the Corps’ final, legally binding word on where federally regulated water is on your parcel. Corps guidance issued in Regulatory Guidance Letter 16-01 distinguishes the two directly, noting that during early consultation “the Corps may attempt to persuade an applicant… to request a PJD… in lieu of an AJD,” according to a summary of that guidance from Hunton Andrews Kurth. The reason the Corps sometimes steers applicants toward a PJD is procedural, not evasive: an AJD is a final agency action under the Supreme Court’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. ruling, which means it can be challenged in court, while a PJD carries no appeal rights because it never claims to be final. If you request a PJD and don’t like what it shows, your recourse is to ask for an AJD instead: you aren’t stuck with an informal answer.
How do you actually submit a request to the Corps?
You submit a written JD request to the regulatory branch of the district office covering your parcel’s location, along with maps or survey information identifying the review area, and the Corps assigns a project manager to the file. The Corps and EPA jointly rely on the 1987 Corps of Engineers Wetlands Delineation Manual and its regional supplements to evaluate three criteria on the ground — hydric soils, hydrophytic vegetation, and evidence of wetland hydrology such as ponding, flooding, or soil saturation — and an area has to meet all three to count as a wetland, according to EPA’s guidance on how wetlands are defined and identified under Section 404. Most requests are stronger, and move faster, when the landowner has already paid a wetland consultant to prepare a wetland delineation report using that same manual, which the Corps then verifies rather than starting from a blank map; the applicant can also choose to proceed on that verified preliminary delineation alone rather than waiting for a full approved determination, according to EPA’s explanation of what a jurisdictional delineation is under Section 404. Expect the project manager to review your submission on paper first and, in most cases not clearly obvious from aerial imagery alone, to schedule a site visit before anything is signed.
| Feature | Preliminary JD | Approved JD |
|---|---|---|
| Legally binding | No | Yes |
| Appealable | No | Yes, through the Corps’ administrative appeal process |
| Typical use | Early planning, quick read before committing to a project | Certainty before purchase, financing, or permitting |
| Validity | Not formally time-limited, but treated as advisory | Five years from the date signed |
How long does the review take, and how long does the answer last?
There is no fixed processing deadline you can hold the Corps to. Guidance Letter 16-01 eliminated the Corps’ earlier self-imposed 60-day processing target and replaced it with a standard of completing determinations “as promptly as practicable in light of the district’s workload,” according to Hunton Andrews Kurth’s summary of the guidance. In practice that means a straightforward parcel in a district with a light caseload can move in weeks, while a complex site, a district backlog, or a request that needs EPA review can stretch into months. Ask the project manager assigned to your file for a realistic estimate rather than assuming a set number of days. Once an approved JD is signed, it’s good for five years unless new site information comes in or the district has flagged your area for more frequent review because conditions there change quickly, according to Williams Mullen’s summary of the Corps’ validity guidance. Build in that runway if a wetlands question is holding up a sale, a construction loan, or a permit application, since a JD requested too close to closing can expire relevance before the deal does.
Does the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision change what counts as a wetland right now?
Yes, as of this writing the legal test for what counts as a federally regulated wetland changed less than two weeks ago, and the Corps’ own rulebook hasn’t caught up yet. The Supreme Court ruled on May 25, 2023 in Sackett v. EPA that wetlands only count as “waters of the United States” if they have “a continuous surface connection” to a relatively permanent body of water, rejecting the broader “significant nexus” test the government had been using, according to Holland & Knight’s analysis of the decision. The federal rule on the books right now, which took effect March 20, 2023, was written around that broader significant-nexus standard the Court just rejected, and the decision “calls into question the validity of the new rule’s broad assertion of jurisdiction over wetlands,” according to Jones Day’s summary of the ruling’s impact. No replacement rule has been issued yet to reconcile the two. Practically, that means a parcel that looked clearly jurisdictional under the old significant-nexus reading, particularly an isolated wetland with no obvious surface connection to a stream or lake, may not be jurisdictional at all under the narrower standard the Court just adopted, even though the written regulation hasn’t caught up. If you’re requesting a JD in the next several months, ask the district directly how they’re currently applying the ruling rather than relying on how a similar parcel was treated last year.
What does a jurisdictional determination actually let you do?
Nothing, by itself. A JD is information, not permission. It confirms where regulated water or wetland boundaries fall on your property and lets you plan around them, but “does not authorize development,” and if you want to place fill, grade, or otherwise disturb an area the Corps has identified as jurisdictional, you still need a separate Section 404 permit, according to Williams Mullen’s explanation of what a JD does and doesn’t cover. One detail worth knowing before you invest in a delineation and a JD request: if you do go on to get a 404 permit based on that determination, the permit remains valid on its own terms even if the underlying JD later expires, so an old JD that’s technically lapsed doesn’t retroactively put a completed, permitted project back in question. What it can’t do is answer state or local questions — a JD is strictly a federal Clean Water Act determination, and a parcel that clears Corps jurisdiction can still be constrained by a state wetland program or a local buildable area requirement layered on top. If the determination does come back showing jurisdictional wetlands on part of the parcel, that isn’t necessarily the end of the road: options from there typically include designing around the wetland footprint entirely, applying for one of the Corps’ general permits if the proposed impact is minor and falls within a pre-authorized category, or applying for an individual Section 404 permit for a larger impact, which involves its own public notice and review timeline separate from the JD you already obtained.
What should you do before you request one?
Pull together whatever you already have before you contact the district: a recent survey or plat showing the review area, any prior delineation reports, and, if you can afford it, a current wetland delineation from a qualified consultant, since a verified professional delineation is what actually speeds Corps review rather than a general sense of where the wet spots are. Confirm you have the due diligence period in any pending purchase or sale contract to accommodate a request that may take months, not weeks, and if you’re evaluating land for other buildability red flags at the same time, 8 red flags that mean land isn’t buildable covers several other documents worth pulling alongside a wetlands determination. Owning a parcel with an unresolved or unfavorable wetlands question doesn’t mean it has no value; it means the pool of buyers willing to sort out the paperwork is smaller. AMM Land Sales makes cash offers directly to landowners on vacant land in all 50 states, including raw acreage with wetlands questions still open, in its as-is condition. There’s no commission and no fee to the seller, since AMM Land Sales is not a licensed brokerage and doesn’t represent either side of a transaction, every purchase closes through a licensed title company, and AMM Land Sales pays closing costs. Call (815) 384-6153 or request an offer to find out what a parcel is worth while a JD is still pending.