Category: Clean Water Act

During the first week of oral arguments of its new term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard City & County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency. (Audio of the roughly 90-minute proceedings can be found here.)

This case marks the court’s first look at the Clean Water Act following its decimation last term of the Chevron deference doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (covered by ELM here), in which the court reversed long-standing precedent to hold that federal courts must exercise …

Ever since the Clean Water Act of 1972 dramatically overhauled the way in which America, through the EPA, monitors and protects its waterways, there has been the struggle between the literal life-and-death need for clean water, and the cold, hard reality that people can, will, and sometimes-have-to release pollutants into the water as part of American life.

The balancing mechanism, however, is built right into the act itself in the form of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program.

As the program dictates, …

Just last week, on October 3, 2022, Sackett v. EPA found itself once again before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments, its first appearance at SCOTUS having been a decade before. In January 2022, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sackett for a second time following remand, the petitioner Sacketts had amended their complaint in order to challenge the subject compliance order issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prohibiting the Sacketts from modifying the wetlands on their property on the basis that …

On December 29, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington held that, under the Clean Water Act, the EPA does not serve as a “mere bystander” in cases where states refuse to or cannot take action to implement water quality standards that protect aquatic life. See Northwest Envtl. Advocates v. United States EPA (2021) U.S. Dist. LEXIS 247673. For many years, the courts have held that while the states have primary responsibility under the Clean Water Act, the EPA itself must …

On September 15, 2021, the Biden administration announced it was rescinding the Trump administration’s guidance on the Supreme Court’s decision in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund and the Clean Water Act (CWA), § 402: National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).

In County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund (590 US –, 140 S Ct 1462 [2019]), the U.S. Supreme Court addressed whether the CWA’s NPDES requires a discharger to acquire “a permit when pollutants originate from a point source but are conveyed to …