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waterkeeper alliance
Complying With Right-Wing Supreme Court, Biden EPA Guts Wetland Protections
"Congress and local elected officials must now step in and do more to protect clean water through durable legislation and state-based action," said one advocate.
Aug 29, 2023
Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling condemned by clean water advocates earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced a revised rule that could clear the way for up to 63% of the country's wetlands to lose protections that have been in place nearly half a century under the Clean Water Act.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said he had been "disappointed" by the 5-4 decision handed down in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agencyin May, but he was obligated under the ruling to issue a final rule changing the agency's definition of "waters on the United States."
As Common Dreams reported, the high court ruled in May that the Clean Water Act protects waters and wetlands that have a "continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights," such as major rivers and coastlines.
Prior to the ruling, the Clean Water Act protected wetlands as long as they had a "significant nexus" to regulated waters, but the EPA rule removes that test from consideration when determining if a waterway should be protected. The rule will leave streams and tributaries—and the communities adjacent to them—without protections from pollution that can be caused by housing and business development, mining, pipeline construction, and a number of industries.
The ruling and resulting EPA rule reflected "the Supreme Court's disturbing pattern of striking down environmental regulations to serve industry interests," said environmental law group Earthjustice on Tuesday.
An EPA official toldThe Washington Post that an estimated 1.2 million to 4.9 million miles of ephemeral streams across the U.S. would immediately lose protections now that the final rule has been issued.
Julian Gonzalez, a water policy lobbyist with Earthjustice, told the Post that changing the rule is "not necessarily what they want to do" at the EPA, while Patrice Simms, the group's vice president of litigation for healthy communities, called the court's ruling a "politically motivated decision" that "ignores science and flies in the face of what almost everyone knows: that we all need clean water."
"The Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority's disastrous ruling in Sackett v. EPA reduced EPA's ability to protect our wetlands and waters from destruction and contamination," said Simms. "The new rule from EPA adjusts its existing regulations to comport with Sackett and reflects our dangerous new reality—one where mining companies, Big Ag fossil fuel developers, and other polluting industries can bulldoze and fill wetlands indiscriminately, harming our public health and ecosystems."
With state regulatory agencies and legislatures now empowered to determine how wetlands are protected, Earthjustice said waterways in states including Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Colorado are the most vulnerable to industrial pollution. States including Vermont, New York, and Minnesota currently have some of the strongest protections in place.
Marc Yaggi, CEO of Waterkeeper Alliance, said that with the climate and pollution crises becoming increasingly destructive, "there could not be a worse time to weaken the Clean Water Act."
"Intensifying droughts are wreaking havoc on agriculture, pollution and toxins are increasingly threatening water sources nationwide, and millions of people are contending with dangerously contaminated drinking water," said Yaggi. "Congress and local elected officials must now step in and do more to protect clean water through durable legislation and state-based action."
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Analysis Shows Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Found in Over 80% of US Waterways
Prevalence of PFAS chemicals known to cause cancer and other harms to people and wildlife "demonstrate that existing laws and regulations are inadequate for protecting us."
Oct 18, 2022
A new study based on localized surveys of waterways across the United States found that more than 80% of streams, canals, creeks, and rivers in the country contain detectable levels of toxic "forever chemicals" that scientists warn can cause an array of damaging harm to people, communities, and wildlife.
According to reporting by the Guardian, the new Waterkeeper Alliance analysis "found detectable PFAS levels in 95 out of 114, or 83%, of waterways tested across 34 states and the District of Columbia, and frequently at levels that exceed federal and state limits."
As the news outlet notes:
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 12,000 chemicals often used to make products resist water, stain and heat. They are called "forever chemicals" because they don't naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems.
Previous analyses have used municipal utility data to estimate that the chemicals are contaminating drinking water for over 200 million people, while another study found widespread contamination of groundwater drawn by private and municipal wells.
Speaking with the Guardian, Waterkeeper Alliance CEO Marc Yaggi said the analysis' findings "clearly show widespread PFAS contamination across the country and demonstrate that existing laws and regulations are inadequate for protecting us."
And because many of the detected chemicals are not officially designated as hazardous substances by the Environmental Protection Agency, Yaggi warns that U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for cleaning up contaminated areas--"subsidizing the industrial polluters," he said.
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Green Groups Sue Army Corps of Engineers Over Nationwide Pipeline Permit
"There's simply no justification for allowing destructive and dangerous pipelines to avoid rigorous environmental review."Â
May 03, 2021
Five eco-advocacy groups sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday for allegedly violating federal law by issuing a nationwide fossil fuel pipeline permit without adequate analysis of its environmental impacts.
"The Biden administration... allowed the new iteration of Nationwide Permit 12 to become effective before any changes could be made to ensure that communities, wildlife, and waterways are protected."
-- Center for Biological Diversity
The lawsuit (pdf)--filed in a federal district court in Montanta by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Sierra Club, Montana Environmental Information Center, Friends of the Earth, and Waterkeeper Alliance Inc.--accuses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) of violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act by reissuing Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP 12) "without adequately assessing its significant direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental effects."
NWPs are only meant to be issued when the permitted activity will have minimal adverse environmental impacts. They require no public notice and, according to CBD, "in many cases projects covered by them may be constructed without any notification to, or further review by, the corps."
\u201c"There's simply no justification for allowing destructive and dangerous pipelines to avoid rigorous environmental review." \u2014 Jared Margolis, @CenterForBioDiv https://t.co/KLmNyBFeZ1\u201d— Center for Biological Diversity (@Center for Biological Diversity) 1620059617
NWP 12--which provides a streamlined process to permit oil and gas pipelines to cross rivers, streams, and wetlands--was reissued in the final days of the Trump administration. CBD said in a statement announcing the lawsuit that in doing so, USACE "failed to analyze the environmental impacts of pipelines, including from oil spills and the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of waterways relied on by people and endangered wildlife."
According to CBD:
The 2021 iteration of Nationwide Permit 12 will allow thousands of discharges of dredged or fill material into the nation's waters and wetlands from oil and gas pipeline construction. The corps estimates that Permit 12 will be used 8,110 times per year, or an estimated 40,550 times over its expected five-year duration, resulting in impacts to approximately 3,075 acres of U.S. waters. These activities--which are approved with little or no environmental review--threaten iconic species like critically endangered sturgeon and whooping cranes, Florida manatees, and hundreds of kinds of migratory birds that need wetlands to survive.
The Biden administration allowed the reissuance of NWP 12 to proceed, even as President Joe Biden signed his day one "Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis," which included rescinding the federal permit for the construction of the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
"While the Biden administration has called for a review of the nationwide permits... it allowed the new iteration of Nationwide Permit 12 to become effective before any changes could be made to ensure that communities, wildlife, and waterways are protected," CBD said.
"This is nothing short of blatant disregard for federal law and the range of serious environmental and socioeconomic harms that will occur."
--Hallie Templeton,
Friends of the Earth
Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at CBD, argued in a statement that "there's simply no justification for allowing destructive and dangerous pipelines to avoid rigorous environmental review, and it's disheartening to see the corps continue to flaunt its obligation to protect our nation's waters and imperiled wildlife."
Hallie Templeton, deputy legal director at Friends of the Earth, said her organization is "extremely disappointed" that the Biden administration has allowed NWP 12 and other nationwide permits to go into effect.
"This move streamlines permitting for a range of dirty industries, like pipelines and offshore aquaculture, and allows the Army Corps to approve these projects without fulfilling mandated environmental reviews and consultations," she added. "This is nothing short of blatant disregard for federal law and the range of serious environmental and socioeconomic harms that will occur."
Last April, a federal judge ruled that USACE violated the ESA when it issued Nationwide Permit 12. The Trump administration ignored the ruling and reissued the permit.
\u201cAttorneys for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota and South Dakota say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers unlawfully authorized the Dakota Access pipeline.\nhttps://t.co/0oYt9p09zF\u201d— ICT (@ICT) 1619442147
The new lawsuit was filed on the same day that the Standing Rock Sioux were set to learn whether the Dakota Access Pipeline will be temporarily shut down for a court-ordered environmental review. The Biden administration has so far refused to cancel DAPL during the review period, despite campaign promises to improve relations with Indigenous tribes and transition the nation to clean energy.
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