Opinion: SCOTUS right to narrow the EPA’s power
The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA, narrowing the federal government’s power to regulate wetlands, was a unanimous 9-0 decision. That may have surprised many Americans who have come to expect a left-right divide on nearly everything.
Over the years, the EPA, which was established in 1970, and the Army Corps of Engineers, the two federal agencies charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, greatly expanded the interpretation of the meaning of “waters” as well as the meaning of “adjacent” as it applied to wetlands near waters. In 2004, Michael and Chantell Sackett bought a small lot near Priest Lake in Utah with plans to build a house, and in 2007 began to backfill the property with dirt and rocks. Within a few months they heard from the EPA that their property contained protected wetlands and if they didn’t restore the site, they could face penalties of over $40,000 per day.
Represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Sacketts have been fighting this battle ever since. The Supreme Court agreed to hear it, Alito wrote, “to identify with greater clarity what the [Clean Water] Act means by ‘the waters of the United States.”
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