04/24/2020
Our very own Thomas Harter helped write the amicus brief used for yesterdays' historical Supreme Court Case:
The Supreme Court, yesterday, decided in favor of science in its interpretation of the Clean Water Act, determining that a "functional equivalent" to direct point source discharge into navigable waters, even via groundwater, must be subject to a NPDES permit.
UC Davis' Thomas Harter, professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist for Groundwater Hydrology, helped write one of the amicus briefs for this case and was interviewed for Science Magazine. He was delighted to see the judges make their decision on sound scientific grounds rather than arbitrary surface water/groundwater distinctions......... He says he was impressed with the understanding that the opinion showed of groundwater transpor
We hold that the statute requires a permit when there is a direct discharge from a point source into navigable waters or when there is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge. [...]The difficulty with this approach, we recognize, is that it does not, on its own, clearly explain how to deal with middle instances. But there are too many potentially relevant factors applicable to factually different cases for this Court now to use more specific language. Consider, for example,just some of the factors that may prove relevant (depending upon the circumstances of a particular case): (1) transit time, (2) distance traveled, (3) the nature of the material through which the pollutant travels, (4) the extent to which the pollutant is diluted or chemically changed as it travels, (5)the amount of pollutant entering the navigable waters relative to the amount of the pollutant that leaves the point source, (6) the manner by or area in which the pollutant enters the navigable waters, (7) the degree to which the pollution (at that point) has maintained its specific identity.Time and distance will be the most important factors inmost cases, but not necessarily every case.
Here is the full Supreme Court opinion and here is the entire case docket. A discussion on CNN and in the NY Times.