The Supreme Court ruled on Monday
that it's just fine to dump toxic sludge in lakes even if it kills all
the fish. In a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld the Army Corps of
Engineers' authority to allow a gold mine in Southern Alaska to get rid
of its 'mine tailings', or the leftover metals after extracting the
gold, by dumping them into a 23 acre lake in a nearby national forest
area. Environmental groups had sued, citing the Clean Water Act, which
puts protection of bodies of water under the authority of the
Environmental Protection Agency. An appeals court ruled in favor of the
environmentalist groups but the case moved on to be heard by the
Supreme Court.Ultimately, the Court was ruling on the legal technicality of who had authority to decide whether to issue a permit to pollute. The Court looked at whether the Army Corps of Engineers was making a sound decision in agreeing with the mining company that it was responsible to dump their waste into this lake even if it would kill everything in it. Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that it was correct to consider the toxic sludge "fill material", which does not fall under more stringent regulations of the EPA. So by defining the material in a different way, it becomes less toxic? It is not exactly the science based decision. We can only hope that it doesn't begin a precedent for other situations where polluting industries want to bypass the EPA and the Clean Water Act for their own purposes.
This ruling is also unfortunate because the Supreme Court does not recognize that fact that the public pays the cost for the mining company's waste. The lake is on national forest, which is public property. Should we be caught up in the debate about which agency should regulate or think about whether polluting industries have the right to put the cost of pollution on the rest of society?
Photo Credit: Fujoshi on Flickr.com
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