Fourteen AGs Filed Amicus Brief in Clean Water Act Groundwater Connection Case

JULY 19, 2019

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh led a coalition of 14 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, a Supreme Court case with major potential implications for the future of the Clean Water Act. In their brief, the attorneys general rejected the administration’s position that the Clean Water Act does not apply to discharges of pollutants that reach protected navigable waters through groundwater conduits, and noted that their states rely on the law’s cooperative federalism framework to regulate pollution discharges into navigable waters. The coalition warned that a decision to eliminate the law’s protections against contamination through groundwater conduits would “leave a dangerous and textually unjustified gap” that is unfilled by existing state and federal law and would “give polluters an incentive to skirt Clean Water Act regulation simply by relocating point source discharges of pollution to nearby groundwater.”