Posted by: Archipelago Law in Uncategorized on October 23, 2024
Highlighting importance of water quality standards for Blue Economy small business owners
Portland, Maine – September 16, 2024
Archipelago Principal Keith P. Richard and Associate Richard L. Qualey recently filed an amicus brief in the matter of City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 23-753, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Attorney Richard and Attorney Qualey submitted the brief on behalf of a group of small business owners and individuals whose livelihoods depend on having clean water free of pollutants. The group includes a commercial fisherman, a commercial lobsterman, a shrimp purchaser, oyster farm owners, and water dependent tourism business owners. In this case, the Court is presented with whether the Clean Water Act allows the EPA (or an authorized state) to impose prohibitions in National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits that subject permit-holders to enforcement for violating water quality standards without identifying specific limits to which their discharges must conform.
In the authors’ words, “[e]liminating the narrative permit provisions would remove an important backstop in permits that enable state and federal agencies to protect the public in general, but also smaller business owners from economic losses resulting from a permittee’s violations of water quality standards.” Comparing the narrative provisions to a backstop in baseball, the authors observed: “In baseball, the catcher may call the pitch, but they have no control over what happens between the mound and the plate. A rogue pitch, a foul tip, an errant catch—in order to protect the observing public, there is a backstop behind home plate. In the same way, numeric limits do not account for changing conditions in the ecosystem—narrative provisions do.”