Biden EPA’s control over water bodies reduced by Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Slashes EPA’s Regulatory Control Over Water Bodies

The Supreme Court has delivered a win for conservative critics by slashing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory control over water bodies. The court ruled that the 1972 Clean Water Act, which allows the EPA to regulate wetlands, only applies to wetlands that are obviously connected to larger regulated water bodies. This ruling arose from a situation where an Idaho couple wanted to build a home on land that the EPA considered a protected wetland. The EPA argued that the “wetlands” on the couple’s property should be classified as “waters of the United States” because they were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion that a protected wetland must have a “continuous surface connection” to a larger body of water. An underground connection that is not obvious does not give the EPA regulatory power, the court ruled. The Clean Water Act is meant to allow the EPA to regulate pollution in “waters of the United States,” but it does not define “waters of the United States,” which allowed the EPA leeway on the definition.

Previous Standard Overturned

The previous standard was determined by former Justice Anthony Kennedy, who ruled that wetlands had to have a “significant nexus” to a nearby regulated body of water. Thursday’s ruling overturns a federal appeals court ruling, which ruled in favor of the EPA in 2021.

Justice Elena Kagan, considered to be one of the court’s more liberal justices, concurred with the judgment, but criticized the court for appointing “itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy.”

In 2017, Rep. John Duarte (R-CA) paid $1.1 million in civil penalties for plowing 22 acres of his farm that the government deemed wetlands near the Sacramento River. Duarte’s farming business, Duarte Nursery, Inc., employed 500 people at the time.

Impact on Family Farms and Rural Communities

Duarte wrote in an op-ed at the time, “They’re going after us because we didn’t get a permit to plow, even though the Clean Water Act says no permit is needed and indeed no permit has ever been required or issued to a wheat farmer ever before; and we didn’t avoid some small wet spots in our field, even though they’re similar to many others commonly farmed through by farmers all over the US (and those seasonal wetlands are still present on our property, as they were before our plowing).”

“It will destroy an important California family business and many jobs,” he said of the financial penalties. “It will also give the federal government unlimited power to extract wealth from family farms and rural communities nationwide.”

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