Which wetlands should receive federal protection? The Supreme Court revisits a question it has struggled in the past to answer
EDITORS’ NOTE: Artificial Construction Treatment Wetlands have been proposed in north Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek to improve water quality and to prevent sewer overflow. Tunnels have been proposed to offset combined sewer flow (CSO) during heavy rainfall and wastewater, stormwater runoff, but the Wetlands’ would clean the water in the creek along as well as strengthen the borough’s aquatic infrastructure, the Eagle reported in 2020. In 2015, the historic regrowth wetlands due to conservation projects on Brooklyn’s southern coast – the Paerdegat tributary and Jamaica Bay – revitalized green spaces unseen since the onset of European colonization.
The U.S. Supreme Court opens its new session on Oct. 3, 2022, with a high-profile case that could fundamentally alter the federal government’s ability to address water pollution. Sackett v. EPA turns on a question that courts and regulators have struggled to answer for several decades: Which wetlands and bodies of water can the federal government regulate under the 1972 Clean Water Act?
Under this keystone environmental law, federal agencies take the lead in regulating water pollution, while state and local governments regulate land use. Wetlands are areas where land is wet for all or part of the year, so they straddle this division of authority.
Swamps, bogs, marshes and other wetlands provide valuable ecological services, such as filtering pollutants and soaking up floodwaters. Landowners must obtain permits to discharge dredged or fill material, such as dirt, sand or rock, in a protected wetland. This can be time-consuming and expensive, which is why the case is of keen interest to developers, farmers and ranchers, along with conservationists and the agencies that administer the Clean Water Act – the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.