Last week, the Supreme Court released its decision in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, a case that considered the ability to regulate stormwater runoff and sediment from logging roads under the Clean Water Act. Some news reports played it as an unequivocal win for the timber industry, but a close look at the decision shows that it’s a little bit more complicated—environmental advocates may even find some comfort in it.
The case (see “On Forest Roads, Loggerheads” in the December 2012 issue of LAM) involved the application of the Clean Water Act’s “point source” permitting requirements to runoff from roads built to transport harvested timber from forested land.
The NEDC, based in Portland, Oregon, argued that building and using these roads, known as logging or forest roads, is “industrial activity” as the Clean Water Act defines it. A lot of logging roads are unpaved, and the group said that sediment from them, carried into rivers and streams by stormwater runoff, is harming aquatic life and impairing water quality.
When it rains hard, these roads do not simply produce “discharges composed entirely of stormwater,” which don’t require permits—the runoff events are more like a byproduct of gathering raw materials for a manufacturing process, the group said. So the owners of these roads should be required to get permits from the EPA or authorized state governments to cover these discharges, just as owners of a factory or mine would have to do. (more…)
