Supreme Court decision puts property rights over clean water

By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday made it harder for the federal government to police water pollution in a decision that strips protections from wetlands that are isolated from larger bodies of water.

It’s the second decision in as many years in which a conservative majority of the court narrowed the reach of environmental regulations.

The justices boosted property rights over concerns about clean water in a ruling in favor of an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy portion of the property as a wetlands that required them to get a permit before building.

FILE – Bethsaida Sigaran, left, of Baltimore, her brother Jaime Sigaran, with American Rivers, and Thea Louis, with Clean Water Action, join supporters of the Clean Water Act as they demonstrate outside the Supreme Court, Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)AP

By a 5-4 vote, the court said in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that wetlands can only be regulated if they have a “continuous surface connection” to larger, regulated bodies of water.

The court jettisoned the 17-year-old opinion by their former colleague, Anthony Kennedy, allowing regulation of wetlands that have a “significant nexus” to the larger waterways.

Kennedy’s opinion had been the standard for evaluating whether wetlands were covered under the Clean Water Act. Opponents had objected that the standard was vague and unworkable.

Environmental advocates had predicted that narrowing the reach of that law would strip protections from more than half the wetlands in the country.