In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court today sided with clean water advocates in a case involving dumping pollutants into water.
The Clean Water Act says that companies, or governments, or whoever, cannot dump pollutants into streams, lakes or oceans without a permit. On the island of Maui, a sewage treatement plant was dumping.....stuff....into wells. However, testing showed that from the wells, it went into groundwater and ultimately ended up in the ocean. They didn't have a permit to dump in the ocean.
The Trump administration sided with the polluters saying that it was ok to pump stuff into the ground. The environmentalists said that if it went into the groundwater, and from there into the ocean, that's really no different than dumping it directly into the ocean. The court, in a 6-3 decision agreed with the environmentalists. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the four Democratically appointed justices.
It is often said that Kavanaugh is a Trump lapdog and will side with him every time, but the record shows otherwise. Once more, he shows that he has at least a little bit of an independent streak. He's no Bill Kennedy, but he also isn't Clarence Thomas, for which we can all be grateful.
(Just in case there's any doubt, I think the majority opinion is pretty much a no brainer. It's rather obvious the intent of the law was to keep pollutants out of waterways. The fact that it goes through groundwater first is hardly a good reason for allowing pollution.)
Here's a link to a CNN story on the opinion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/supr...ater-case.html
The Clean Water Act says that companies, or governments, or whoever, cannot dump pollutants into streams, lakes or oceans without a permit. On the island of Maui, a sewage treatement plant was dumping.....stuff....into wells. However, testing showed that from the wells, it went into groundwater and ultimately ended up in the ocean. They didn't have a permit to dump in the ocean.
The Trump administration sided with the polluters saying that it was ok to pump stuff into the ground. The environmentalists said that if it went into the groundwater, and from there into the ocean, that's really no different than dumping it directly into the ocean. The court, in a 6-3 decision agreed with the environmentalists. Roberts and Kavanaugh joined the four Democratically appointed justices.
It is often said that Kavanaugh is a Trump lapdog and will side with him every time, but the record shows otherwise. Once more, he shows that he has at least a little bit of an independent streak. He's no Bill Kennedy, but he also isn't Clarence Thomas, for which we can all be grateful.
(Just in case there's any doubt, I think the majority opinion is pretty much a no brainer. It's rather obvious the intent of the law was to keep pollutants out of waterways. The fact that it goes through groundwater first is hardly a good reason for allowing pollution.)
Here's a link to a CNN story on the opinion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/supr...ater-case.html
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2KvsDmA
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