In A First, Judge Requires CWA Permit Using High Court Groundwater Ruling

摘要

A federal judge is requiring a Hawaii county's treatment plant to obtain a Clean Water Act (CWA) permit to govern discharge of treated wastewater into its injection wells that then makes its way to the Pacific Ocean, a first-time application of the Supreme Court's landmark test on when pollutants that travel through groundwater require a permit. "The discharge from the County's injection wells into the groundwater and ultimately into the ocean is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge such that it triggers the [National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)] permit requirement," Judge Susan Oki Mollway of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii wrote in a July 15 ruling in Hawai'i Wildlife Fund, et al., v. County of Maui. The decision, which comes after the suit was remanded back to the district court following the Supreme Court's April 2020 ruling, is winning praise from environmentalists, who are signaling they plan to use the precedent in a series of other pending cases over such releases from pipelines, animal feeding operations and coal ash disposal facilities.