Ruling by the court, which has a Republican super majority, undermines the 1972 Clean Water Act

Summary

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act by limiting the EPA’s authority to issue generic water quality standards.

The majority, led by Justice Alito, ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements. The city of San Francisco prevailed, challenging the EPA’s narrative-based permits for sewage discharges.

Dissenters, led by Justice Barrett, argued the law authorizes stronger measures to protect water supplies.

The case marks the first significant Clean Water Act challenge since Chevron deference was overturned in 2024.

    • lolrightythen@lemmy.world
      39·
      2 days ago

      Its not as if this saves money. It just shifts the expense. Purified water treatment plants are going to have to compensate for increasingly contaminated source water. I’d wager this will negatively impact nitrification. Just pollution for no societal gain. Greed, I assume.

      Ugh. I think I’ve hit my limit for bad news today. Be well, all.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      611·
      2 days ago

      You’re from the UK, yes? The issue here is combined sewers; these produce overflow during periods of heavy rainfall. They’re a characteristic of older cities. You guys in the UK, with older cities, have considerably more of these than does the US, especially the western US, which are mostly newer cities built after separate sewers became the norm.

      I don’t know how you’d measure public views on the matter.

      kagis

      These guys are UK-based and studying public opinion on the matter:

      https://www.jacobs.com/newsroom/thought-leadership/combined-sewer-overflows-uk-what-can-we-learn-other-countries

      In our review, we found that CSOs in the U.K. do receive a higher level of public attention and are more heavily scrutinized than in European Union (EU) countries, while the U.S. is further ahead in terms of public awareness and stakeholder involvement.

    • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 days ago

      FINALLY! God it feels like I’ve been saying it forever but OUR WATER IS TOO CLEAN! Cannot tell you how much I miss sewage and dead animals in my water. Puts hair on your chest! Kids these days barely know what it’s like to get a little cholera or typhoid. By the time I was six I had e coli twice, and salmonella. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. MAGA!!

      • cheers_queers@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        there’s prison slavery happening all over the country. “fun” fact, school districts are encouraged to purchase furniture made by incarcerated people, and can even hire them to do maintenance type jobs (like painting etc).

        shit is already fucked.

  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    96·
    2 days ago

    What do you need clean water for? You can purchase it from Nestle anyway as part of your essentials subscription.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    The EPA 100% has a spreadsheet showing which pollutants lead up to those “end results”. Hopefully a swath of specific limitations comes out very, very, quickly.

  • crusa187@lemmy.ml
    28·
    2 days ago

    Great, so now asshole industrialists can pollute with whatever new-fangled chemicals they want, and if it’s not on the blacklist (good luck navigating the red tape to add to that list btw), they are free of liability and the public can get sick. Wonderful.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    Something something “drain the swamp”.

    The joke about Republicans letting the likes of Bronzo the Clown take a shit in their mouth if they thought a liberal would have to smell it now became very close to literally true.

    “Not having to eat actual shit from our water supply is just a lot of woke bullshit!” -magamorons, probably

  • Eddbopkins@lemmy.world
    21·
    2 days ago

    This decision doesn’t sound like its in the best interest of the people. And no corporations are not people. This can only end badly.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
    263·
    2 days ago

    ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements.

    Any scientists out there who can talk to the specifics of this?

    To a layman like me, this seems like six and a half of one, a half a dozen of another.

    Is asking for specificity a bad thing, scientifically and environmentally speaking?

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • mrbeano@lemm.ee
      29·
      2 days ago

      In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court blocked the EPA from issuing permits that make a permittee responsible for surface water quality, or “end result” permits – a new term coined by the court.

      I also don’t know, but get really suspicious if Alito needs to invent a “new term” to frame the case with

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
      22·
      2 days ago

      I haven’t read the exact statutes, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

      Some compounds, like phosphates and nitrates, are well studied, and so experts can put limits in place that they know will result in good outcomes. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of potential contaminates someone could dump into a body of water, so for anything less well studied, it’s really hard to make limits. The EPA apparently just set a backstop that said something along the lines of “whatever you put in the water has to still result in good water quality”.

      Now that the Supreme Court has shut that down, a polluter can put anything in the water that isn’t specifically disallowed. For a (fake) example, maybe Forever Chemical x2357-A is shown to hurt wildlife at concentrations over 2 parts per billion (after lots of expensive, taxpayer funded research), so the EPA rules that they have to keep it below 2 ppb. The company could adjust their process so their waste is Forever Chemical x2357-B instead, and they can release as much as they want.

      The EPA basically just gets forced to play whack-a-mole spending lots of money to come up with specific rules to the point that they can’t actually do their jobs.

    • culprit@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 days ago

      From a legal perspective I think it means that the permits are only able to set pre-requisite limits, but any end result can not be used to revoke it. Basically a CYA permit that allows the permitted entity to have oopsies as the end result that do not invalidate the permit. That’s my poorly informed take on the legalese.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
    10·
    2 days ago

    If the EPA are the experts wouldn’t it make sense they should set specific requirements for water safety? What am I missing here?

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    1 day ago

    I thought San Francisco were supposed to be good guys? Why are they pulling the EPA in front of the Supreme Court? Just to save some money on their infrastructure at the cost of the public?