Ruling by the court, which has a Republican super majority, undermines the 1972 Clean Water Act

Summary

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act by limiting the EPA’s authority to issue generic water quality standards.

The majority, led by Justice Alito, ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements. The city of San Francisco prevailed, challenging the EPA’s narrative-based permits for sewage discharges.

Dissenters, led by Justice Barrett, argued the law authorizes stronger measures to protect water supplies.

The case marks the first significant Clean Water Act challenge since Chevron deference was overturned in 2024.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
    264·
    1 day ago

    ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements.

    Any scientists out there who can talk to the specifics of this?

    To a layman like me, this seems like six and a half of one, a half a dozen of another.

    Is asking for specificity a bad thing, scientifically and environmentally speaking?

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
      24·
      24 hours ago

      I haven’t read the exact statutes, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

      Some compounds, like phosphates and nitrates, are well studied, and so experts can put limits in place that they know will result in good outcomes. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of potential contaminates someone could dump into a body of water, so for anything less well studied, it’s really hard to make limits. The EPA apparently just set a backstop that said something along the lines of “whatever you put in the water has to still result in good water quality”.

      Now that the Supreme Court has shut that down, a polluter can put anything in the water that isn’t specifically disallowed. For a (fake) example, maybe Forever Chemical x2357-A is shown to hurt wildlife at concentrations over 2 parts per billion (after lots of expensive, taxpayer funded research), so the EPA rules that they have to keep it below 2 ppb. The company could adjust their process so their waste is Forever Chemical x2357-B instead, and they can release as much as they want.

      The EPA basically just gets forced to play whack-a-mole spending lots of money to come up with specific rules to the point that they can’t actually do their jobs.

    • mrbeano@lemm.ee
      32·
      1 day ago

      In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court blocked the EPA from issuing permits that make a permittee responsible for surface water quality, or “end result” permits – a new term coined by the court.

      I also don’t know, but get really suspicious if Alito needs to invent a “new term” to frame the case with

    • culprit@lemmy.ml
      6·
      1 day ago

      From a legal perspective I think it means that the permits are only able to set pre-requisite limits, but any end result can not be used to revoke it. Basically a CYA permit that allows the permitted entity to have oopsies as the end result that do not invalidate the permit. That’s my poorly informed take on the legalese.