Activists are celebrating a major victory in a recent lawsuit that will force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt and follow more strenuous regulations regarding water pollution standards in industrial facilities.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on June 30 that the EPA's failure to update many of its wastewater standards since the 1970s was negligent and fell far short of the expectations and provisions set out by the Federal Clean Water Act.
The court then sent its decision back to the EPA and asked the organization to either update its standards or provide a detailed explanation of why it should not.
The Surfrider Foundation and nearly a dozen other parties first filed the suit against the EPA in 2023, arguing that the Agency needed to update its policies to reflect modern society, as 39 of the 59 industrial categories defined by the EPA haven't been updated in over 30 years, and 17 of those categories haven't seen an update since the 1970s.
In making the decision of whether or not to change its processes, the EPA must consider three key factors: the developments in pollution control technology, the available data regarding pollutants discharged by indirect dischargers, and the scope of the standards to include known pollutants and waste streams, such as nutrients and stormwater runoff, that are not already covered.
This court decision is a huge sigh of relief for environmental groups, and the EPA's presumably upgraded water pollution standards are an uncomplicatedly good outcome. That the decision comes at a time when the agency's leadership has trended more toward rolling back regulations than enforcing them makes the decision even more of a win for ensuring clean water.
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Unsurprisingly, contaminated water has been proven to cause long-term health damage, including a recent report that found significant amounts of microplastics in publicly accessible bodies of water. Microplastics, the infinitesimally small pieces of plastic that some scientists say can cause a "car crash" in blood vessels, have been able to survive wastewater treatment processes.
Perhaps, with the EPA's updated guidelines, that may not be the case for much longer.
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