Top Official, Industry Lawyer Battle Over Need For CWA Jurisdiction Rule

摘要

Administration and industry officials are battling over whether regulators need the pending rule clarifying the reach of the Clean Water Act (CWA) to bring enforcement actions against "midnight" dumpers of pollutants in small headwaters upstream of jurisdictional waters. Speaking during the May 22 Environmental Law Institute (ELI) panel discussion, "Will the new waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) Rule float?" Lance Wood, assistant chief counsel with the Army Corps of Engineers' environmental law and regulatory programs, said the existing confusion over the scope of the water law hinders prosecution of polluters for discharges into small tributaries connected to larger downstream waterbodies, in other words "inviting midnight dumpers." Wood, who was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the Corps, cited as an example a 1997 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in U.S. v. Eidson, in which the court upheld a conviction for discharges of sludge into a Florida drainage ditch that eventually flowed into Tampa Bay tributaries.