{"id":754,"date":"2010-03-26T14:54:07","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T18:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=754"},"modified":"2010-04-23T12:51:22","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T16:51:22","slug":"supreme-court-ruling-encourages-toxic-dumping-into-americas-water-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=754","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Ruling Encourages Toxic Dumping into America&#8217;s Water Supply"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Charles Duhigg &amp; Janet Roberts, NEW YORK TIMES, February 28, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image_thumb2.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image\" width=\"162\" height=\"108\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a> Thousands of the nation\u2019s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act\u2019s reach because the <a title=\"More articles about the U.S. Supreme Court.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/s\/supreme_court\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">Supreme Court<\/a> has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them.<\/p>\n<p>And pollution rates are rising. Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to <a title=\"More articles about the Environmental Protection Agency.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/e\/environmental_protection_agency\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">Environmental Protection Agency<\/a> regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.<\/p>\n<p>The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation\u2019s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,\u201d said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. \u201cThis is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can\u2019t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a huge deal,\u201d James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. \u201cThere are whole watersheds that feed into New York\u2019s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The court rulings causing these problems focused on language in the Clean Water Act that limited it to \u201cthe discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters\u201d of the United States. For decades, \u201cnavigable waters\u201d was broadly interpreted by regulators to include many large wetlands and streams that connected to major rivers. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/01\/us\/01water.html\" target=\"_blank\">[Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court&#8217;s mischief ruling parses the 30-year-old Clean Water Act so that it no longer covers many smaller water bodies, even if they feed major water supplies. Polluters are having a toxic dumping party at American&#8217;s expense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,401],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":898,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}