Supreme Court to Interpret Clean Water Act

The US Supreme Court has decided to take 2 Clean Water Act cases next  year that will have relevance to West Virginia.  Both come from the Ninth Circuit, which must be the most reversed circuit in the land.  The first is an appeal by Los Angeles County of a decision that  it is responsible for the discharge of pollutants that it doesn't generate  through its  storm water conduits. The  Los Angeles Times reports that

The Los Angeles County Flood Control District has argued it is not to blame for the tainted runoff -- even if it were so polluted with oil and grease that it caught fire -- because it does not generate the pollutants. The agency has said the thousands of miles of storm drains and flood channels it oversees are mere conduits for upstream polluters, including dozens of cities and industrial sites.

The county appealed last year's federal appeals court ruling that it did not matter if the flood control district was the source of the pollution because it still controlled its flow toward the ocean.

It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court will do. Many cities are in the same position - they have constructed and operate storm water systems that convey all manner of pollutants that they don't generate.  Animal wastes, lawn chemicals, dirt, road salt, and  almost anything imaginable  can wash into streams through the city system..  Sometimes the storm water flows are directed to waste water treatment plants,  which overwhelm treatment systems  during heavy rains, creating combined sewer overflows of untreated sewage and runoff.  If the Court decides cities aren't responsible for the pollutants they convey but don't generate, they would certainly have an incentive to decouple storm water and sanitary systems where possible.

The second  appeal is of the Ninth Circuit's decision requiring NPDES permits for storm water runoff from   logging roads.  (Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, U.S., No. 11-338,certiorari granted 6/25/12).. EPA disagreed with the Ninth Circuit decision, but urged the Court to allow it to stand while it addressed the matter through  regulation. The Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal anyway. Alex Kovski of Bloomberg News reports it in this fashion: 

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upended decades of Environmental Protection Agency policy that avoided application of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting requirements to millions of miles of forest roads used primarily for logging operations.
In 2010, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center won the Ninth Circuit decision, which was reaffirmed in 2011, saying stormwater runoff from two logging roads in Oregon's Tillamook State Forest must be considered a “point source” subject to NPDES permitting if the water is channeled in any way (Northwest Environmental Defense Center v. Brown, 640 F.3d 1063, 9th Cir. 2011).

West Virginia is filled with logging roads, and the timber industry will follow this with interest.