Isolated wetlands
From the Fields of Runnymede to the Waters of the United States: A Historical Review of the Clean Water Act and the Term "Navigable Waters"
Editors' Summary: This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court will be deciding two very important wetlands cases. In both, the Court is asked to decide whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...
Judicial, Administrative, and Congressional Responses to SWANCC
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC),1 courts have scrambled to reevaluate the scope and reach of the...
Could SWANCC Be Right? A New Look at the Legislative History of the Clean Water Act
For over two decades courts and agencies have assumed that the Clean Water Act (CWA) grants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) jurisdiction over the nation's waters to the full...
The Court, the Clean Water Act, and the Constitution: SWANCC and Beyond
Environmentalists are no strangers to disappointment in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the recent case of Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC)1 is...
Federal Regulation of Isolated Wetlands After SWANCC
This past January, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Clean Water Act (CWA) did not authorize the federal government to prohibit a landfill operator from filling isolated ponds on its property merely because the ponds were used as...
Navigating Federalism: The Missing Statutory Analysis in Solid Waste Agency
For the last several years, federal circuit courts1 have debated the exact jurisdictional scope of § 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA),2 which authorizes the Secretary of the U.S....