The Clean Water Act (CWA) is a detailed and ambitious set of programs for water quality improvement. Public Law 95-217, first passed in 1972, protects wetlands and its inhabitants. They need saving because they protect and improve water quality and provide habitats for fish and wildlife. Additionally, these areas store floodwaters, maintain surface water flow during dry times, and offer shoreline erosion control.
Wetlands compare to rain forests and coral reefs in their excellent productive ecosystems. The EPA website explains these areas “can be thought of as ‘biological supermarkets.’ They provide great volumes of food that attract many animal species.”
Additionally, wetlands play a critical role in the ecology of the watershed. The shallow water, high levels of nutrients, and primary productivity are ideal for developing organisms that form the food web base.
This also feeds many fish species, amphibians, shellfish, and insects. Scott C. Yaich, Ph.D., agreed that wetlands are crucial to healthy watersheds.
He added that many of them are in the floodplains of rivers and streams. As a result, they play an important role in flood control.
Conservatives Against EPA Wetland Regulations
Unfortunately, the recent Supreme Court ruling is its latest attack against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Court found in favor of the plaintiff, four to three. In doing so, they dramatically narrowed the wetlands the EPA regulates. Specifically, the majority ruled that only those with a “continuous surface connection” to larger bodies of water would be protected.
SCOTUS’s decision in Sackett v. EPA reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling that Michael and Chantell Sackett were required to obtain a special permit from the EPA to build on their land because of its closeness to Priest Lake in Coolin, Idaho.
Despite their property having wetlands considered navigable waters, the Sacketts’ lawyer argued their circumstances did not fit the current EPA law as a road separated it and their building site.
Although all the justices agreed that the plaintiffs should win the case, according to Newsweek, they disagreed with the reasoning.
Four of the five conservative Justices, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts, applied a broader legal standard to the existing EPA wetland rules than the other justices.
As a result, conservative Justice Brett Kavanagh sided with his liberal colleagues, Elana Kagen, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in opposing further narrowing the CWA’s wetlands protection.
Kavanagh wrote that he was very disappointed that the Court’s conservative majority had essentially rewritten the CWA, ignored its text, and “45 years of consistent agency practice and from this Court’s precedents. Moreover, by narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”
Written by Cathy Milne-Ware
Sources:
United States Environmental Protection Agency: Why are Wetlands Important?
The Intercept: In a Gift to Polluting Industries, Supreme Court Rolls Back Clean Water Act Protections; by Amy Westervelt
Roll Call: Supreme Court Narrows Clean Water Act Protections; by Michale Macagnone
Newsweek: Brett Kavanaugh Breaks With Conservative Supreme Court Justices; by Katherine Fung
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