Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-260_jifl.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

17 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

1973).9  More recently, the EPA recognized “conflicting legal
precedents”  on  this  question.  Compare  NPDES  Permit
Regulation and Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Stand-
ards 
for  Concentrated  Animal  Feeding  Operations 
(CAFOs), 68 Fed. Reg. 7216 (2003), with 66 Fed. Reg. 3018
(2001).

Similarly,  in  its  2019  Interpretive  Statement,  the  EPA 
acknowledged  its  “[l]ack  of  consistent  and  comprehensive
direction” on this issue.  See 84 Fed. Reg. 16820; see also
Brief for Edison Electric Institute et al. as Amici Curiae 21– 
32 (recounting EPA historical approach to NPDES permit-
ting).  But it added that “the best, if not the only, reading of
the  [Act]  is  that  all  releases  to  groundwater  are  excluded
from the scope of the NPDES program, even where pollu-
tants  are  conveyed  to  jurisdictional  surface  waters  via
groundwater.”  84  Fed. Reg. 16814.

In short, the EPA’s inconsistent position on the ground-
water  issue  does  not  provide  a  sufficient  basis  for  the 
Court’s new “functional equivalent” test. 

* 

* 

* 

The  Court  adopts  a  nebulous  standard,  enumerates  a 
non-exhaustive  list  of  potentially  relevant  factors,  and 
washes  its  hands  of  the  problem.   We  should  not  require
regulated parties to “feel their way on a case-by-case basis” 
where the costs of uncertainty are so great.  Rapanos, 547 
U. S., at 758 (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring).  The Court’s de-
cision invites “arbitrary and inconsistent decisionmaking.” 
UARG, 573 U. S., at 350 (ALITO, J., concurring in part and 
dissenting in part).  And “[t]hat is not what the Clean [Wa-
ter] Act contemplates.”  Ibid. 

I  would  reverse  the  judgment  below  and  instruct  the 

—————— 

9 This early understanding, as the Court describes, is consistent with 
the legislative history, which shows that Congress intentionally left reg-
ulation of groundwater pollution to the States.  See ante, at 7–8.