WC130 MayJune2023 - Magazine - Page 23
International
Implications
Will a U.S. wetlands
case drive Canadian
regulation and legislation?
BY SAUL CHERNOS
N 2004, CHANTELL AND MICHAEL SACKETT set out
to build a home a few hundred feet from Priest Lake in Idaho. The Sacketts, who ran an excavation company, began to
fill the lot with gravel to prepare for construction. However,
under the authority of the U.S. Clean Water Act, the regulator
determined that the lot contained a federally protected wetland
and ordered them to remove the gravel and halt construction. The
Sacketts sued and, backed by powerful lobbyists including the
Pacific Legal Foundation, the case worked its way to the nation’s
top judicial body last October. A ruling, expected this spring, will
decide whether or not the wetland the Sacketts filled is, jurisdictionally speaking, a Water of the United States (WOTUS) and
thus subject to federal protection and permitting.
The definition of what constitutes WOTUS has long been
contested, with some parties looking to reduce environmental
impacts from activities such as farming, resource extraction, and
property development, and other parties actively opposing restrictions. While pollution from industrial and municipal wastewater
emissions is fairly widely understood and recognized, legislators
are struggling to address potentially harmful impacts from natural
materials such as soil and rock. “Most people understand intuitively that industrial wastewater going into a stream or wetlands is
essentially causing biological and chemical alteration, that you’re
polluting it,” explains Jessica Kao, a retired senior EPA attorney
who handled cases in the agency’s Pacific-Southwest region. “But
if you’re filling something, you’re in most instances actually quite
literally and physically obliterating it.”
I
Saul Chernos
Saul Chernos is a freelance writer for Water Canada
Saul Chernos
Getty Images
is a freelance writer
with Water Canada.
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2023
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