Another Supreme Disaster For The Environment

As we close in on the last six weeks of this year's US Supreme Court session, we get to the major rulings that chance the face of America as the Roberts Curt continues to reshape the country into a Christian conservative corporatocracy, and today's Sackett v. EPA ruling is as bad as critics of the court's conservative bloc expected, if not worse.

 

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency in a dispute over its authority to regulate certain wetlands under the Clean Water Act, long seen as a key tool to protect waterways from pollution.

In an opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito in the case known as Sackett v. EPA, the high court found that the agency's interpretation of the wetlands covered under the Clean Water Act is "inconsistent" with the law's text and structure, and the law extends only to "wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies of water that are 'waters of the United States' in their own right."

Five justices joined the majority opinion by Alito, while the remaining four — Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — concurred in the judgment.

The decision from the conservative court is the latest to target the authority of the EPA to police pollution. On the final day of its term last year, the high court limited the agency's power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to efforts to combat climate change.

That dispute involved the Clean Air Act, and the Supreme Court now has addressed the EPA's authority under the Clean Water Act, which regulates discharges of pollutants into what the law defines as "waters of the United States." Under regulations issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "waters of the United States" is defined to include "wetlands" that are "adjacent" to traditional navigable waters.

The long-running case dates back to 2007, when Michael and Chantell Sackett began building a home on a lot in a residential neighborhood near Priest Lake, Idaho. After the Sacketts obtained local building permits and started placing sand and gravel fill on the lot, the EPA ordered the work to stop and directed the couple to restore the property to its natural state, asserting the land contained wetlands subject to protection under the Clean Water Act.

 

In other words, millions of acres of wetlands whose waters feed into America's rivers and lakes are no longer under EPA protection, and corporations can do whatever they want with the land as far as building, pollution and environmental damage that will almost certainly end up in our water supplies.

So far this term the Roberts Court has gutted the Clear Air Act, and now it has gutted the Clean Water Act.

 

Expect the Cuyahoga RIver to catch fire again pretty soon.