Yesterday, the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School announced that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of environmental organizations seeking to force the U.S. EPA to regulate ship discharges under the Clean Water Act. This decision follows a 2005 lower court ruling that the EPA had illegally exempted ship discharges from the Clean Water Act requirements. This move deals a setback to the shipping industry, but helps out the environment. And makes you wonder a little about EPA. What environment are they protecting if they aren’t following their own regulations?

“The EPA spent nearly ten years fighting against using the nation’s only comprehensive law to combat an environmental plague that is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars,” said Deborah Sivas, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School, which represented the three plaintiff groups. “We are gratified that the Appeals Court has held the EPA accountable so that this country can begin to control the dangerous tide of invasive species.”

The court’s ruling upholds the lower court’s order directing the EPA to take specific action when it comes to regulating these ships and making sure they are in compliance with the Act and it also restricts the discharge of invasive species into ballast water. The draft permit also requires treatment of the pollutants contained in other types of ship discharges.

Nina Bell, Executive Director of the Portland, Ore.-based Northwest Environmental Advocates, said the court’s decision will properly shift some of the burden of invasive species from taxpayers to shippers. “The Ninth Circuit’s decision is very important for the taxpayers who have been paying the huge price of the EPA’s continuing refusal to implement the Clean Water Act,” said Bell. “If the EPA had used its Congressional mandate thirty years ago, this country would have been using the Clean Water Act to effectively control ship discharges for all that time,” she added.

Thank goodness for organizations like the Environmental Law Clinic. They enable their students to provide legal assistance to non profit organizations on many environmental issues and they focus mainly on natural resource conservation.

I think people need to start caring more about our waters. I don’t necessarily believe we’ll run out of it anytime soon but why pollute something that is in essence, our source of life. Why pollute anything for that matter!? So kudos to Stanford and hopefully the EPA remains in compliance.

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Filed under: Water Issues