Supreme Court ruling limits federal wetland protections
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply limited the federal government’s authority to police water pollution into certain wetlands, the second decision in as many years in which a conservative majority narrowed the reach of environmental regulations.
The outcome could threaten efforts to control flooding along the Mississippi River and protect the Chesapeake Bay, among many projects, wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, breaking with the other five conservatives. Environmental advocates said the decision would strip protections from tens of millions of acres of wetlands.
The justices boosted property rights over concerns about clean water in a ruling in favor of an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy portion of the property as a wetlands that required them to get a permit before filling it with rocks and soil.
By a 5-4 vote, the court said in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that wetlands can only be regulated under the Clean Water Act if they have a “continuous surface connection” to larger, regulated bodies of water. There is no such connection on the Sacketts’ property.
President Joe Biden said the court’s decision defies science and undermines a law that has been used for a half-century to make American waters cleaner.
“It puts our Nation’s wetlands — and the rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds connected to them – at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers, and businesses rely on,” Biden said in a statement.
The court jettisoned the 17-year-old opinion written by their former colleague, Anthony Kennedy, allowing regulation of what can be discharged into wetlands that could affect the health of the larger waterways.
Kennedy’s opinion covering wetlands that have a “significant nexus” to larger bodies of water had been the standard for evaluating whether permits were required for discharges under the landmark 1972 environmental law. Opponents had objected that the standard was vague and unworkable.
The outcome almost certainly will affect ongoing court battles over new water regulations, including for wetlands, that the Biden administration put in place in December. Two federal judges have temporarily blocked those rules from being enforced in 26 states.
Congress voted in March to overturn the administration’s new water rules, and even though Biden vetoed the measure, the prospect of legislative action to restore wetlands protections anytime soon is remote.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Regan, credited the Clean Water Act with leading to “transformational progress” in cleaning up the nation’s waterways. “I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court decision that erodes longstanding clean water protections,” he said in a statement.