EPA Won’t Regulate Pollution That Moves Through Groundwater

EPA won’t regulate any pollution to surface waters that passes through groundwater. The Clean Water Act regulates pollution to surface water and requires permits for so-called point-source discharges to them. But questions have remained about whether the law regulates any pollution that ends up in surface waters, or only direct discharges.EPA now says it’s the latter. “The agency concludes that the best, if not the only, reading of the Clean Water Act is that Congress intentionally chose to exclude all releases of pollutants to groundwater from the [point source] program, even where pollutants are conveyed to jurisdictional surface waters via groundwater,” the agency wrote in an interpretive statement posted online last night.