Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Thursday cut the capacity of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Actvoting by a 5-4 majority of its Thursdays, which continues a trend in which the conservative-leaning court has reduced the scope of regulations protecting the environmentaccording to CNN
The Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are the waters of the United States in their own right,” Judge Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
The decision is a victory for Chantell and Michael Sackett, who bought a vacant lot near Idaho’s Priest Lake and broke ground three years later hoping to build a family home, but soon became embroiled in a regulatory dispute. When they began to fill the property with 1,700 cubic yards of sand and gravel to create a stable slope, the EPA sent them an order to stop construction.
“The wetlands on the Sackett property are distinguished from any possibly covered water,” Alito wrote, because they are not directly connected to them. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion.
Alito said the wetland had to have a “continuous surface connection to that water, which makes it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetland begins.”
President Joe Biden considered in an official statement that the ruling “puts the country’s wetlands at risk of contamination and destruction” and it also jeopardizes the clean water sources that serve millions of Americans.
Biden stressed that the ruling “drastically changes” the legal framework that has protected the country’s water for decades and “challenges science, which has demonstrated the crucial role of wetlands in safeguarding rivers and lakes from pollutants.”
The Court considered that the EPA must provide “clear evidence” about the scope of its authorization to regulate in the matter and also called on Congress to enact “extremely clear language if it wishes to significantly alter the balance between federal, state, and government power over private property.”
Conservative magistrate Samuel Alito admitted that the Clean Water Act has been a success and that before its promulgation in 1972, many of the country’s rivers and lakes were seriously polluted.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre warned in her daily press conference that the Joe Biden Administration plans to “review the decision.”
“The President will use all legal authority available to him to ensure that Americans in every state have clean water. Not only clean, but also drinking water. This is going to be our priority,” said Jean-Pierre.
For the National Wildlife Federation, The ruling jeopardizes the supply of drinking water for millions of people and threatens the health of the nation’s streams and wetlands.no.
“The federal protections of the Water Act are essential for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities across the country. The court’s ruling removes protections that are vital to streams and wetlands in every state,” Jim Murphy, director of Legal Defense for the organization, said in a statement.
Murphy therefore called on “both Congress and state governments to intervene, close the gap and protect threatened waters and the people who depend on them.”
Keep reading:
– Samuel Alito thinks he knows who leaked the bill that struck down Roe v. Wade
– Why should Supreme Court justices have term limits and a code of ethics?
– Supreme Court preserves access to abortion pill for now