详情

原文传递 In The Courts

题名：	In The Courts
正文语种：	eng
摘要：	For wetlands to qualify as "waters of the United States," as used in the Clean Water Act (CWA) to define navigable waters over which the protections of the CWA extend, sec 33 U.S.C.A § 1362(7), they must be in-distinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes "waters" under the CWA, the United States Supreme Court has held. Writing for a majority of the court, Justice Alito explained that although the CWA's use of "waters" encompassed only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming geographical features described in ordinary parlance as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, such an understand- ing did not exclude all wetlands from the protections of the CWA. Justice Alito then focused on establishing the proper test for determining whether wetlands were "waters of the United States." In rejecting the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) argument that its rule setting forth a significant-nexus test was adequate, Justice Alito reasoned that such a broad interpretation was not supported by the text of the CWA and gave rise to serious due process vagueness concerns in light of the CWA's criminal penalties. In order to avoid reading "navigable" out of the CWA, Justice Alito explained the test must regulate wetlands to be indistinguishable from other covered waters, that is, to have a continuous surface connection to other bodies that were "waters of the United States" in their own right. Using a narrower test would ensure that there was no clear demarcation between waters and covered wetlands. Justice Alito then applied the narrower test to a residential lot near a lake that landowners had backfilled with dirt and rocks in preparation for construction of a home before receiving a compliance order from the EPA demanding restoration on the basis that the lot contained protected wetlands. The subject wetlands were not protected, despite being in the same neighborhood as an unnamed tributary and nearby to a large wetland complex, because the wetlands were located on the other side of a 30-foot road from the unnamed tributary, which fed into the lake. (Reversing and remanding Sackett v. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, 8 F .4th 1075 (C.A.9-Idaho 2021).-Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.), No. 21-454, May 25, 2023, Alito, J., 2023 WL 3632751.
出版年：	2023
期刊名称：	The Waterways Jouranl
卷：	137
期：	21
页码：	26-27