Supreme Court Reins EPA Power in Sackett Homeowner Case

WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court unanimously scaled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s power under the Clean Water Act by defining the “waters of the United States” on Thursday inThis is the ongoing saga of the Sackett family. They’re an Idaho couple who bought a lot in a residential neighborhood in 2004 to build a house, and in 2007 started preparing the property for construction.

“This case concerns a nagging question about the outer reaches of the Clean Water Act , the principal federal law regulating water pollution in the United States,” Justice Samuel Alito began in his majority“The Act applies to ‘the waters of the United States,’ but what does that phrase mean?” Alito continued.

But “the CWA prohibits the discharge of pollutants into only ‘navigable waters,’ which it defines as ‘the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,’” Alito noted, getting to the heart of the case. The Army Corps of Engineers used “a 143- page manual to guide officers when they determine whether property meets this definition.

The court then permanently scaled back the EPA’s reach, holding that “the CWA’s use of “waters” encompasses only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming geographical features that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.’”

“Wetlands that are separate from traditional navigable waters cannot be considered part of those waters, even if they are located nearby,” emphasizing the new limit on EPA’s reach.…that “waters” may fairly be read to include only those wetlands that are “as a practical matter indistinguishable from waters of the United States,” such that it is “difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

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