The Supreme Court on Thursday limited federal protections for wetlands by ruling that swampy areas are usually not covered by the Clean Water Act or protected from development unless the water flows directly from them into a waterway such as a river, lake or bay.

By In

a

5-4 votes

the court ruled for one

in Idaho

suppose no house was allowed to be built on a marshy vacant lot next to scenic Prie

St Lake in Idaho.

“We believe that the CWA extends only to those ‘wetlands in continuous surface connection with bodies that are waters of the United States in themselves,’ so that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters,” said Judge Samuel A. Alito

Jr

for a 5-4 majority.

Many wetlands will not fall under that definition.

Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor disagreed, saying Congress intended to protect more wetlands from development.

The decision in Sackett vs. EPA is a win for landowners and developers, and a setback for environmentalists.

The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 to prevent pollution from being discharged into the “navigable waters” of the United States, but the extent of the federal authority has been in dispute ever since.

Because water flows downhill, environmental regulators said they needed broad authority to prevent discharges into small streams or wetlands that drain into waterways. The banned pollutants include gravel and sand, which cannot be dumped in wetlands without first obtaining a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers or the EPA.

But property rights advocates argued that EPA had overstepped its authority. They said overzealous federal agents prevented homebuilders, developers and even farmers from using their land.

The ruling marked the second Supreme Court victory for Idaho couple Michael and Chantell Sackett.

In 2004 they bought a lot that was about 300 meters from the lake. At the back of the property were wetlands that drained into the lake, and part of their property was swampy. The couple had done excavation work in the past and they dumped gravel and sand into a boggy part of the lot as a first step towards building a house.

Their realtor had warned them that the lot contained wetlands, and in 2007 an EPA official told them they needed a permit before they could develop the lot to build a home.

The Pacific Legal Foundation took up their case, winning a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in 2012 that allowed them to challenge the wetland’s designation in court before beginning the costly process of obtaining a permit.

In their second challenge

a federal judge in Idaho and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against the pair, holding that their waterlogged lot was a protected wetland.

Attorney Damien Schiff appealed to the Supreme Court, saying “Sacketts’ property does not contain any stream, river, lake or similar body of water,” and their “injunction is indicative of everything that has gone wrong with the implementation of the Clean Water Act .

In defense of the EPA, Justice Department lawyers said that wetlands such as swamps, swamps, swamps and fens… play a critical role in regulating water quality. They provide flood control and capture and filter sediment and other pollutants that would otherwise be carried into downstream waters.