- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
Summary
In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act by limiting the EPA’s authority to issue generic water quality standards.
The majority, led by Justice Alito, ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements. The city of San Francisco prevailed, challenging the EPA’s narrative-based permits for sewage discharges.
Dissenters, led by Justice Barrett, argued the law authorizes stronger measures to protect water supplies.
The case marks the first significant Clean Water Act challenge since Chevron deference was overturned in 2024.
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This cornucopia of corruption is unprecedented. It seems we’re seeing all of his buyers receiving their benefits in real time.
Nothing learned:
This is a completely separate issue…?
A 5-4 decision that weakens water protections is a win for polluters, not the public.
🐱
It’s not a win for the polluters. They’re polluting their own water.
“Public” means everybody, it’s not the other team that goes with “private”. It’s everybody.
Nice try, but polluters don’t see ‘everybody’—just dollar signs and disposable ecosystems.
🐱🐱
Yes California has one Sewage Crisis. But what about Second Sewage Crisis?
Its ridiculous when the courts are so clearly partisan. What is the point of the justice system anymore?
The EPA 100% has a spreadsheet showing which pollutants lead up to those “end results”. Hopefully a swath of specific limitations comes out very, very, quickly.
I thought San Francisco were supposed to be good guys? Why are they pulling the EPA in front of the Supreme Court? Just to save some money on their infrastructure at the cost of the public?
San Francisco has been shifting conservative for a while. A bunch of tech millionaires want to turn it into a futuristic dystopia.
The city government of San Francisco is fucking broke because they built their entire budget and town around shitty tech startup open offices and nobody ever wanted that so now it all sits empty and decaying.
Should have seen what they did to their homeless as soon as they were legally allowed to. When you travel far enough, extreme Left and Right both seem to be looping around and into the anus of Authoritarianism.
Implying that “extreme left” in any way applies to establishment Democrats.
Shithole country. Literally.
Its not as if this saves money. It just shifts the expense. Purified water treatment plants are going to have to compensate for increasingly contaminated source water. I’d wager this will negatively impact nitrification. Just pollution for no societal gain. Greed, I assume.
Ugh. I think I’ve hit my limit for bad news today. Be well, all.
Is America great now?
FINALLY! God it feels like I’ve been saying it forever but OUR WATER IS TOO CLEAN! Cannot tell you how much I miss sewage and dead animals in my water. Puts hair on your chest! Kids these days barely know what it’s like to get a little cholera or typhoid. By the time I was six I had e coli twice, and salmonella. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. MAGA!!
Maybe they’ll have the best dysentery? That’s not nothin.
Ask the Californian prison slaves
there’s prison slavery happening all over the country. “fun” fact, school districts are encouraged to purchase furniture made by incarcerated people, and can even hire them to do maintenance type jobs (like painting etc).
shit is already fucked.
Let’s bring back lead paint.
Let’s bring back coal refineries in full swing.
Let’s bring back rulings against having warning labels.
Let’s just go all the fucking way in how we can truly bastardize this country even further.
Don’t forget good old asbestos!
Something something “drain the swamp”.
The joke about Republicans letting the likes of Bronzo the Clown take a shit in their mouth if they thought a liberal would have to smell it now became very close to literally true.
“Not having to eat actual shit from our water supply is just a lot of woke bullshit!” -magamorons, probably
Why don’t we just drain the swamp right into the drinking water supplies of schools? It’s a win-win-win!
Great, so now asshole industrialists can pollute with whatever new-fangled chemicals they want, and if it’s not on the blacklist (good luck navigating the red tape to add to that list btw), they are free of liability and the public can get sick. Wonderful.
Oh look we changed the formula for Horrible Death Liquid tm by one molocule. Anyways we’ll just throw that in the reservoir behind the elementary school, what could go wrong?
This decision doesn’t sound like its in the best interest of the people. And no corporations are not people. This can only end badly.
what makes you think drumpf gives a fuck?
Mmm, this Freedom Water tastes amazing
It’s got electrolytes!
It’s what plants crave ⚡
ruled that the EPA must impose specific pollutant limits instead of broad, “end result” requirements.
Any scientists out there who can talk to the specifics of this?
To a layman like me, this seems like six and a half of one, a half a dozen of another.
Is asking for specificity a bad thing, scientifically and environmentally speaking?
In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court blocked the EPA from issuing permits that make a permittee responsible for surface water quality, or “end result” permits – a new term coined by the court.
I also don’t know, but get really suspicious if Alito needs to invent a “new term” to frame the case with
I also don’t know, but get really suspicious if Alito needs to invent a “new term” to frame the case with
Yeah, there’s definitely a " ‘WTF?’ Factor" going on with that.
I can’t wait to hear what the Legal Eagle on YouTube says about that.
I haven’t read the exact statutes, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Some compounds, like phosphates and nitrates, are well studied, and so experts can put limits in place that they know will result in good outcomes. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of potential contaminates someone could dump into a body of water, so for anything less well studied, it’s really hard to make limits. The EPA apparently just set a backstop that said something along the lines of “whatever you put in the water has to still result in good water quality”.
Now that the Supreme Court has shut that down, a polluter can put anything in the water that isn’t specifically disallowed. For a (fake) example, maybe Forever Chemical x2357-A is shown to hurt wildlife at concentrations over 2 parts per billion (after lots of expensive, taxpayer funded research), so the EPA rules that they have to keep it below 2 ppb. The company could adjust their process so their waste is Forever Chemical x2357-B instead, and they can release as much as they want.
The EPA basically just gets forced to play whack-a-mole spending lots of money to come up with specific rules to the point that they can’t actually do their jobs.
From a legal perspective I think it means that the permits are only able to set pre-requisite limits, but any end result can not be used to revoke it. Basically a CYA permit that allows the permitted entity to have oopsies as the end result that do not invalidate the permit. That’s my poorly informed take on the legalese.
