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Page Number: 20.0

16 

COUNTY OF MAUI v. HAWAII WILDLIFE FUND 

Opinion of the Court 

(or over the beach), the permitting requirement clearly ap-
plies.  If the pipe ends 50 miles from navigable waters and 
the pipe emits pollutants that travel with groundwater, mix
with much other material, and end up in navigable waters
only many years later, the permitting requirements likely
do not apply.

The  object  in  a  given  scenario  will  be  to  advance,  in  a
manner consistent with the statute’s language, the statu-
tory purposes that Congress sought to achieve.  As we have 
said  (repeatedly),  the  word  “from”  seeks  a  “point  source”
origin,  and  context  imposes  natural  limits  as  to  when  a 
point source can properly be considered the origin of pollu-
tion  that  travels  through  groundwater.    That  context  in-
cludes the need, reflected in the statute, to preserve state
regulation  of  groundwater  and  other  nonpoint  sources  of 
pollution.  Whether pollutants that arrive at navigable wa-
ters after traveling through groundwater are “from” a point
source depends upon how similar to (or different from) the 
particular discharge is to a direct discharge. 

The difficulty with this approach, we recognize, is that it
does not, on its own, clearly explain how to deal with middle
instances.  But there are too many potentially relevant fac-
tors  applicable  to  factually  different  cases  for  this  Court
now to use more specific language.  Consider, for example,
just some of the factors that may prove relevant (depending 
upon  the  circumstances  of  a  particular  case):  (1)  transit 
time,  (2)  distance  traveled,  (3)  the  nature  of  the  material
through which the pollutant travels, (4) the extent to which 
the pollutant is diluted or chemically changed as it travels, 
(5) the amount of pollutant entering the navigable waters 
relative to the amount of the pollutant that leaves the point 
source,  (6)  the  manner  by  or  area  in  which  the  pollutant
enters the navigable waters, (7) the degree to which the pol-
lution  (at  that  point)  has  maintained  its  specific  identity.
Time  and  distance  will  be  the  most  important  factors  in
most cases, but not necessarily every case.