Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox Presented “Making Waves: The Ripple Effects of the Supreme Court’s New ‘Functional Equivalent’ Test on Clean Water Act NPDES Discharge Permitting
Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox’s Brenda Gotanda, Bryan Franey and Megan Elliott presented “Making Waves: The Ripple Effects of the Supreme Court’s New ‘Functional Equivalent’ Test on Clean Water Act NPDES Discharge Permitting”. The August 10 program was a webinar for West LegalEdCenter/ Thomson Reuters.
The presentation described the federal Clean Water Act’s (CWA) NPDES permitting framework and provided an analysis of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, which created a new standard for evaluating whether a permit is required when pollutants are discharged from a point source to groundwater and conveyed indirectly to navigable waters. The panel addressed key aspects of the statutory text and the Supreme Court’s decision, including its new “functional equivalent” standard. The panel also explored the potential implications of the decision on current and future permitting, enforcement, and litigation.
