WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over wetlands in a decision with broad ramifications for the environment, agriculture, energy and mining.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Thursday opinion that the Clean Water Act covers only wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to navigable waters, overturning a 2006 precedent recognizing federal protection for wetlands with a “significant nexus” to such bodies. The new interpretation, Alito wrote, “accords with how Congress has employed the term ‘waters’ elsewhere in the Clean Water Act.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case comes less than a year after it curbed the EPA’s authority to limit emissions from coal plants. In that blockbuster case, West Virginia v. EPA, the court said the EPA had overstepped when it devised the Obama-era regulatory scheme known as the Clean Power Plan.
Joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, Alito praised the Clean Water Act as a “great success” since its 1972 enactment that restored polluted lakes and rivers across the nation. “Today, many formerly fetid bodies of water are safe for the use and enjoyment of the people of this country,” Alito wrote.
He characterized the decision as resolving a “nagging question” over the act’s outer boundaries, which the vague language Congress used to define its scope—it protects the “waters of the U.S.”—left unclear.
“Does the term encompass any backyard that is soggy enough for some minimum period of time?” he wrote. “How about ditches, swimming pools, and puddles?”
The court, he wrote, had now provided an answer that would spare property owners the sometimes great expense and even potential criminal liability for misjudging whether their projects were covered by the Clean Water Act...........
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