The Supreme Court ruling changes how to define the “waters of the United States,” which are regulated by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers under the Clean Water Act.
WASHINGTON – Ranchers and Republican lawmakers are welcoming a Supreme Court ruling that narrows the range of waters subject to federal regulation, calling it a win for private property rights that reins in overeager regulators.
People are also reading… The ruling Thursday ends a long-running dispute between Michael and Clara Sackett, who wanted to build a house on land they bought near Priest Lake, Idaho, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which said the property contained wetlands. The EPA said the Sacketts did not get government approval for the project, ordered them to stop backfilling and begin restoration of the site, and threatened fines of more than $40,000 a day if they failed to comply.
But he said the boundaries of the act have “been uncertain from the start,” and asked whether waters of the U.S. included “‘mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows playa lakes?’ How about ditches, swimming pools, and puddles?” That uncertainty put property owners in a “precarious position,” he wrote.
Those three justices also joined in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence, which said that narrowing the test from “adjacent” wetlands to “adjoining” would “leave some long-regulated waters no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control for the United States.”
But Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, said desert washes “help to feed our perennial waters. They also help with flood control. They help limit sedimentation, and of course, they’re essential to wildlife. Most of our wildlife is associated with riparian areas in some way those vegetation community that grows along rivers, streams and washes.”
That was echoed by Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, who tweeted: “Every American deserves access to clean water. Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court just made it easier for the oil and gas industry to pollute our wetlands.”
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