Supreme Court weakens EPA power to enforce Clean Water Act

“We hold that the CWA extends to only those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right, so that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters,” Alito wrote, quoting from past court opinions.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court’s liberals, comparing the ruling to last term’s decision limiting the EPA’s ability to combat climate change. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” she wrote, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.He wrote that the majority’s new test “departs from the statutory text, from 45 years of consistent agency practice, and from this Court’s precedents” and will have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.

The justices were reviewing for a second time the plans of Michael and Chantell Sackett, who want to build a home on their property near Priest Lake, one of the Idaho’s largest. The EPA says there are wetlands on the couple’s 0.63-acre lot, which makes it subject to the Clean Water Act and allows the government to require permits and impose penalties for violations.Over the next two months, the Supreme Court will announce decisions on all the cases it heard this term.

The Biden administration and environmental groups have argued for preserving broader federal authority over such matters. Narrowing the reach of the law would undermine the government’s ability to protect wetlands thatfor instance, are separated from a river by a small dune but still affect that river’s chemical, physical and biological integrity.Four presidential administrations have now been mired in the fight over what constitutes a wetland. The George W.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

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