WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a couple who have been battling the Environmental Protection Agency for more than a decade over a plan to develop a two-thirds-acre lot near Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle, a decision with national ramifications for water quality, agriculture and development.
The case, which was centered on the scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act, was arguably the most important environmental decision the Supreme Court has handed down since a majority last year invalidated an EPA effort to regulate power plant emissions. The plaintiffs asked the court to provide a clearer definition for what the law meant when it gave the agency power to regulate the “waters of the United States.”
In an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito who was joined by four conservative justices, the court ruled that the federal government can regulate water that has a “continuous surface connection” to major bodies of water. The court overturned a decision from a federal appeals court that had sided with the EPA.
Air:Supreme Court rules against EPA effort to regulate power plant emissions
Water:Supreme Court kicks off a new term with controversial cases
Michael and Chantell Sackett purchased a vacant lot in a residential subdivision in Idaho in 2004. The couple obtained the county permits needed to develop the site but were informed by the EPA shortly after they began construction that the agency viewed the land as subject to its review because it contained wetlands about 300 feet from Priest Lake.
During oral arguments in October, several members of the court’s conservative majority questioned the standard the EPA uses to determine if a wetland is subject to federal permitting requirements and oversight. Chief Justice John Roberts summed up the challenge facing the court by noting that water often flows underground in ways that are difficult to predict or measure: “Water goes everywhere, eventually.”
The Sacketts’ suit was on its second ride at the Supreme Court. In 2012, a unanimous court held that the couple could file their lawsuit even though the EPA asserted it had not taken a final action in the dispute. As the litigation wound its way through lower courts again, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for 9th Circuit sided with the EPA and upheld the agency’s order against the Sacketts.
The case has been closely watched by environmentalists, developers and farming groups who have long fought over how far the EPA’s reach extends beyond navigable lakes and rivers and smaller streams and wetlands that feed into − and pollute − those larger bodies of water.
