Complimentary Webinar: Navigating the Effect of County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund on Clean Water Act Permitting
Presented by Kelly Coulon, P.E. of Roux and Maggie Macdonald of Sive, Paget & Riesel • Wednesday, August 12 at 1pm EDT
The federal Clean Water Act (CWA) regulates the discharge of pollutants into navigable waterways of the United States. Until recently, discharges of pollutants to groundwater were generally considered to be outside the scope of the CWA. The April 23, 2020 County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund Supreme Court Decision held that pollutants discharged to groundwater are regulated under the CWA if the discharges are the “functional equivalent of a direct discharge” to navigable waters. The Supreme Court set forth a non-exhaustive list of seven technical factors, such as pollutant transit time and pollutant distance traveled, to demonstrate “functional equivalence.”
This Supreme Court Decision is important because it attempts to refine the scope of the CWA with respect to discharges to groundwater, and has broad applicability; these issues are already being litigated in lower courts and will likely continue to be the source of litigation among previously unregulated entities, including in the context of citizen suits.
The webinar provides a brief overview of the County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund Supreme Court Decision, and focuses on the applicability of the decision to existing and future groundwater discharges, with specific examples from existing cases and hypotheticals. Please register below:
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