Pearl River      In the United States the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 during President Richard Nixon’s term was a huge environmental accomplishment.  The Supreme Court’s decision in 2023 in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency was a significant attack on the broad reach of these protections over the last fifty years.  A recent report in Science was useful in understanding the new, reduced regulatory regime, along with the challenges and uncertainties the court’s decision has left for the protection of clean water and its sources.

The problem goes back to the beginning in the bill’s drafting, likely based on compromises and horse trades necessary to get the bill passed.  The CWA defines its coverage as “navigable waters,” and then defines that phrase additionally as “the waters of the United States.”  It’s easy to immediately see the problems.  Clearly, groundwater is not protected, and, as clearly, commercially navigable water is protected.

What does that say about my pieces of the bayou and my ability to canoe, fish, or whatever, believing CWA protects my water?  Just today, mi campanera spotted someone in the marsh several hundred yards to the north of the dock, likely testing the water for some local, state, or federal agency.  Hooray!  Likely, under Sackett Cowan Bayou is protected because it drains into the Pearl River separating Louisiana and Mississippi, so offers the prospect of navigation and commercial exploitation.  The fact that Pearl River Wildlife Refuge is nearby also helps on this bayou. The fact most of the 7000 acres of the Fritche Marsh outside of Slidell is also part of the 18,000-acre Big Branch National Wildlife Refugee and our two acres of marsh along Salt Bayou is infill there, is also good news.

The streams that come and go in the Ozarks with the season, as well as wetlands not connected to other water bodies have likely now lost protection under the Sackett decision.  Trump’s EPA had already moved to gut the CWA in its regulations, which the court has affirmed, partially based on the claim that they didn’t have an inventory of the various water bodies that might have been covered under the CWA.  Science covered different efforts by scientists and researchers that indicate this supposed void could have been filled, if the government had been on the job and cared about keeping more water clean.  They used various sources and artificial intelligence.  No surprise that a lot of the water sources for larger streams start in the ephemeral ones, just like snowmelt coming into seasonal streams that feed the Buffalo River in the Ozarks.  As many as “686,000 stream miles and 15% of the wetlands in the continental United States” are likely not protected now, thanks to the Supreme Court, which is unbelievably irresponsible.

Worse, to claw back clean water protections will be a steep climb.  As the old saying goes, it would “take an Act of Congress.”  The other option would be a different decision by the Supreme Court, but as we know from one decision after another harming the American people now, that could take decades as well.