Colorado hopes to fill gaps in WOTUS created by packed SCOTUS; ND Supreme Court to hear CO2 pipeline case

Throughout its history the US Army Corps of Engineers has had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation and in 2014, through the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act, the Obama White House moved to identify more closely the sources of non-point pollution. 

Waters of the United States or WOTUS legislation seeks to give authority to the EPA to use some teeth to enforce the rights of people downstream to have clean water even from some sources that the US Geological Survey has already identified as impaired. But, the Trump-packed Supreme Court of the United States reversed environmental protection for a majority of American citizens and enabled the corporatocracy to pollute at will.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act has protected the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) since 1972. In Sackett v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the definition of WOTUS did not include wetlands adjacent to streams. Only wetlands with a direct surface water connection to a stream or permanent body of water are now protected under the Clean Water Act. One example of those source waters is a type of sensitive, high-country wetland now potentially left vulnerable: fens. These are groundwater-fed wetlands that form peat over thousands of years, are home to rare plants and insects, and cannot be easily restored if destroyed. Fens are sometimes isolated with no stream as an outlet. [Colorado lawmakers expected to consider state permit program protecting wetlands]

Some it crossing Waters of the United States, Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a ditch for a $4.5 billion pipeline vulnerable to rupture and rip up over two thousand miles of unceded tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried then pump carbon dioxide to some sacrifice zone in occupied North Dakota ostensibly to be sequestered.

Filing in support of Summit were Basin Electric and the state of North Dakota. Without survey access, “Basin Electric would face significant time delays in gaining access to land for purposes of performing environmental and land surveys that must be performed prior to final route determination, acquisition of necessary land rights, and constructing electrical transmission lines,” attorneys for Basin Electric wrote. North Dakota’s Public Service Commission has rejected Summit pipeline route application. [North Dakota Supreme Court to hear pipeline survey access case]

Learn more at the Bismarck Tribune.