Supreme Court Ruling Finds Old, New Middle Ground on Clean Water Act's Application to Groundwater
In 1972, the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) created a permit system for point source discharges to navigable waters of the United States – rivers, lakes, and coastal waters – with the goal of restoring and protecting their water quality. Typically, these permits are issued by the U.S. EPA or through state agencies to dischargers of wastewater, e.g., from urban and industrial wastewater treatment plants and to other dischargers of potentially contaminated water that reach streams by a pipe or similar conveyance. The goal was to provide some degree of regulatory oversight over such discharges. In California, the State Water Resources Control Board implements the federal Clean Water Act using its authority under the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act (Water Code, §13000 et seq.). Under the CWA, neither EPA nor the states are required to issue permits for pollutant discharges into groundwater or to nonpoint source dischargers.
Last week, the Supreme Court decided on a case involving discharge from a wastewater reclamation facility owned and operated by the County of Maui. In this case, the facility discharged 3 to 5 million gallons of treated wastewater per day into …
