{"id":689,"date":"2010-03-01T04:36:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T12:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=689"},"modified":"2010-03-01T04:36:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T12:36:37","slug":"us-extreme-court-favors-polluters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/01\/us-extreme-court-favors-polluters\/","title":{"rendered":"US Extreme Court Favors Polluters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s one of the reasons we must keep Republicans out of the White House.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"clean-water\"<\/a> Thousands of the nation\u2019s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act\u2019s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law<\/strong>, according to interviews with regulators. <\/p>\n

As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising. <\/p>\n

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency 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

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<\/strong> because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials. <\/p>\n

\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<\/strong>.\u201d <\/p>\n

\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

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. <\/p>\n

But the two decisions suggested that waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be \u201cnavigable waters\u201d and are therefore not covered by the act \u2014 even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

This is easy enough for Congress to fix, but the GOP is screaming that Big Government will try to regulate rain if \u2018navigable\u2019 is removed from the law.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s one of the reasons we must keep Republicans out of the White House. Thousands of the nation\u2019s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act\u2019s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}