Clean Water Win!
By Jennifer Hecker | Director of Natural Resource Policy
The verdict is in on a long fought-battle for water protection. On March 3, 2016, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a water polluter’s appeal, thereby ensuring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will continue to be able to uphold and enforce the Clean Water Act.
This legal battle originally started in early 2014 centered around controlling pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. However, the State of Florida interjected itself to argue that US EPA has no authority to prevent nutrient pollution (such as hog manure from industrial scale animal feeding operations) — asserting it was solely up to the individual states. The State of Florida argued that regulation of nutrient pollution lies solely with the states, because states know how to prevent nutrient pollution, and will do a better job at it than EPA.
Given Florida’s abysmal record on adequately controlling pollution, we disagreed that states always stand up to the special interests to adequately protect their waters from nutrient pollution. We believed that this case would sete a negative precedent nationwide that would hinder our efforts here in Florida to control the nutrient pollution fouling our waters so we decided to engage to defend EPA.
On behalf of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and several other environmental organizations, Earthjustice filed an amicus brief in the Third Circuit advocating that EPA should retain oversight to ensure states adhere to the federal Clean Water Act — telling the real story of what has happened in Florida, which is that far from being a shining success of a state being proactive in protecting its water resources, that Florida had failed its citizens, leading to unsafe water quality and toxic algae outbreaks across the State. The Third Circuit rejected the State of Florida’s argument, allowing the EPA oversight authority and protections for the Chesapeake Bay to remain in place. Just this week, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the polluters’ appeal which lays the matter finally to rest — ensuring EPA will continue to have oversight authority to uphold the Clean Water Act nationwide for controlling water pollution, including nutrient pollution in Florida.
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida is proud to be a part of the win for clean water and will be ever vigilant in ensuring the Clean Water Act is upheld and properly enforced going forward.
Click here to learn more about our water quality work around Southwest Florida.
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