Court tells EPA: Oil and water don’t mix

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So says the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Environmental Protection Agency, throwing out a new agency rule that allowed oil and gas developers to skirt some requirements of the Clean Water Act and dump storm-water debris in streams without going through the pesky, time-consuming process of obtaining permits.

Friday’s decision will help protect thousands of streams across the West, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which brought the suit. The group argued that runoff from oil and gas projects mucks up boating, swimming and fishing and decreases property values.

EPA officials argued that they were merely following Congress’ wishes and making a teeny adminsitrative change that would allow storm-water sediment from oil and gas construction sites to flow into streams, as long as it was not contaminated.

The federal judges decided that was a bit wishy-washy on EPA administrator Stephen Johnson’s part (actually ‘arbitrary and capricous’ is what they said), since Congress had really said no such thing, and previous EPA adminsitrators had said for decades that storm-water debris from oil and gas sites was contaminated.

-- Janet Wilson