California is no stranger to severe droughts. Eleven of the past 17 years have been in drought, with urban water shortages, barren farm fields, and a lack of water for fish and wildlife — the most recent ending just last winter when soaking rains finally returned.
A new rule governing federally protected waters and wetlands was issued Tuesday by the EPA to align agency regulations with a US Supreme Court ruling that will allow unpermitted development in wetlands across the country.
The rule revises the Biden administration’s earlier waters of the US, or WOTUS, definition finalized in January, removing its legal basis, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in May in Sackett v. EPA.
Limiting the government’s authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, the Supreme Court ended a nearly two-decade-old dispute Thursday.
The ruling from the court was unanimous, with the justices affirming summary judgment in the suit by Chantell and Michael Sackett against the Environmental Protection Agency.
This week marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1972 Clean Water Act, which, among other things, made it a legal requirement to clean up sewage to certain standards before dumping it into rivers or the ocean.
Congressional staffers who helped craft the landmark Clean Water Act 50 years ago acknowledge they left a big hole in the law — one that’s now blamed for the single largest pollution source in streams, rivers and lakes.
Nonpoint-source pollution — a technocratic term describing pesticides, oil, fertilizers, toxins, sediment and grime that storms wash into waterways from land — still befuddles federal regulators to this day.
President Richard Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in 1972. But Congress overrode him on a bipartisan vote, and the landmark law to reverse the toxic degradation of U.S. rivers, lakes and streams took effect half a century ago today.
The law was inspired in part by the notorious 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio, in which the river itself, laden with oil and other industrial pollutants, went up in flames.
The Supreme Court opened its new term on Monday by hearing a property rights appeal that calls for limiting the government’s power to protect millions of acres of wetlands from development.
At issue is whether the Clean Water Act forbids polluting wetlands and marshes that are near — but not strictly part of — waterways.
If you want to cross the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, anytime between October and July, you probably won’t need a boat, a bridge, waders or even waterproof shoes. During most of the year, the river is an arroyo, a curvy strip of dry sand that holds no more than the memory of water: braided serpentine patterns in the sand, erosion-smoothed stones, debris wrapped around the trunks of the few hardy deciduous trees.
For decades, the Supreme Court struggled to define a key term at the heart of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 legislation that forms the backbone of America’s efforts to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”
It’s an admittedly difficult question, that is now in the hands of the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s. And the Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority seems poised to deal a severe blow to the clean water law, in a case that could do significant harm to America’s efforts to prevent floods and to ensure that everyone in the country has access to safe drinking water.
Democratic-led states, tribes, and conservation groups will not see a Trump-era water rule declared invalid before the Ninth Circuit decides the issue or the EPA issues a new rule, a federal judge in California ruled.
The plaintiffs wanted the US District Court for the Northern District of California to resume their lawsuit over the Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification Rule issued in 2020 that they said unlawfully restricted states’ and tribes’ ability to reject water polluting projects.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
