"Ripped the heart out of the law we depend on to protect American waters and wetlands"
JESSICA CORBETT for Common Dreams
The decision in Sackett
v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is "unanimous in result
but very split in reasoning," explained Slate's Mark Joseph Stern.
"The upshot of Sackett is that, by a 5–4 vote, the
Supreme Court dramatically narrows" which wetlands are covered by the
Clean Water Act (CWA).
The majority opinion—authored by Justice
Samuel Alito and joined by all of the court's other right-wing members except
Justice Brett Kavanaugh—concludes that the CWA only applies to wetlands with
"a continuous surface connection" to larger bodies of water,
excluding those that are "adjacent."
Earthjustice
declared in
response to the ruling that "this is a catastrophic loss for water
protections across the country and a win for big polluters, putting our
communities, public health, and local ecosystems in danger."
Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), was similarly critical, saying that "the Supreme Court ripped the heart out of the law we depend on to protect American waters and wetlands."
"The majority chose to protect
polluters at the expense of healthy wetlands and waterways. This decision will
cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the
price," Bapna warned.
"What's important now is to repair the
damage," he added. "The government must enforce the remaining
provisions of law that protect the clean water we all rely on for drinking,
swimming, fishing, irrigation, and more. States should quickly strengthen their
own laws. Congress needs to act to restore protections for all our
waters."
Elizabeth Southerland, former director of
science and technology in EPA's Office of Water, noted that "since 1989,
the U.S. government has used Clean Water Act authority to either prevent the
filling of wetlands or to permit filling only when an equal acreage of wetlands
is reclaimed or restored."
"Wetland preservation is critical for
providing flood control, absorbing pollutants, preventing shoreline erosion,
storing carbon, and serving as a nursery for wildlife," stressed
Southerland, now a volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network.
Thursday's decision, she said, "is a
big win for land developers and miners, who will now be free to destroy certain
types of wetlands without paying for wetland reclamation," and "a big
loss for communities who will have to pay more to treat their drinking water
and respond to increased flooding and shoreline erosion."
The high court was criticized for hearing
the case—brought by an Idaho
couple denied a permit by the EPA—as the federal agency was finalizing a new
waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule following the Trump administration's
widely condemned rollback. The Biden
administration's policy was just finalized in December.
"While Earthjustice and our allies are
closely evaluating the impact of the Sackett decision on the
new WOTUS regulation," said Sam Sankar, the legal group's vice president
of programs, "we can say with certainty that the court has once again
given polluting industries and land developers a potent weapon that they will
use to erode regulatory protections for wetlands and waterways around the
country."