Sackett

Bowing to the Inevitable

The Supreme Court declared open season on the nation’s streams and wetlands. New regs are the result.

On August 25, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers (“the agencies”) issued a joint rule, which modifies their previous rule on federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act in order to conform with the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision. Sackett was a deeply misguided and harmful ruling — but it is nevertheless the law.  The …

CONTINUE READING

After Sackett: A Multi-Prong Strategy

The Supreme Court’s wetlands opinion was terrible. Now what we do?

The Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case dramatically curtails the permitting program covering wetlands.  We urgently need to find strategies for saving the wetlands the Court left unprotected.  We have a number of possible strategies and need to start work on implementing them immediately. Sackett was unquestionably a major blow, reducing federal jurisdiction over …

CONTINUE READING

How Sackett Will Hurt Endangered Species In California

And what the state can do about it

Others have already posted about the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision that significantly cuts back on the geographic scope of Clean Water Act Section 404 regulation protecting wetlands.  Understandably, there has been a lot of attention to the direct effects of that change, which means that federal permitting will no longer apply to many wetlands in …

CONTINUE READING

Sackett and the Dangers of a New ‘Clear-Statement Rule’

Wikimedia (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA will be bad for the nation’s wetlands. It is just as bad for democracy. 

The Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to defend a large portion of the nation’s wetlands and waterways from pollution. The decision strips key environmental protections from the Clean Water Act by narrowly defining which bodies of water can be regulated under the Act, making it the most …

CONTINUE READING

Supreme Court Sides With Property Owners in Wetlands Dispute With USEPA

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the most closely watched environmental case on the Court’s docket this Term: Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As expected following an especially lively set of oral arguments in the Sackett case earlier this year, the justices ruled–unanimously–in favor of the private property owners who had brought …

CONTINUE READING

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Are on USEPA’s Case

You can’t blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of late for feeling it’s under siege. All of the current Republican presidential candidates are regularly excoriating EPA on the campaign trail, and Congress has conducted oversight hearings and threatened all sorts of legislative action designed to clip EPA’s regulatory wings. Now the U.S. Supreme Court appears …

CONTINUE READING

TRENDING