The Clean Water Act forbids the addition of any pollutant conveyed from “any point source” to “navigable waters” without an appropriate permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Can that prohibition be circumvented by pumping the polluted water into wells which then leak via groundwater into those same lakes, rivers, streams, or ocean?
The Maui county government and the Trump administration argued that the meaning of “from any point source” is not about where the pollution originated, but about how it got there. Thus, the government claims, a permit is required only if a point source ultimately delivers the pollutant to navigable waters. By contrast, if a pollutant travels through groundwater, then the groundwater is the conveyance and no permit is required.
The Trump administration specifically argued that the proper interpretation of the statute is the one reflected in administration's recent Interpretive Statement, namely, that “all releases of pollutants to groundwater” are excluded from the scope of the permitting program, “even where pollutants are conveyed to jurisdictional surface waters via groundwater.”
The question before the court: does that comport with Congress's intent and phrasing in the Clean Water Act?
Nope. 6-3 Decision in "County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund" arrived two days ago and just crossed my desk.
Majority opinion (authored by Breyer) and dissenting opinions available in a combined document at the link below. Please refrain from calling for the heads of the dissenting justices before reading and understanding their dissent (which is a good rule in general)