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Page Number: 52

18 

SACKETT v. EPA 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

United States v. Holland, 373 F. Supp. 665, 669, 672–674
(MD Fla. 1974); 40 CFR §125.1(o) (1974) (initial EPA CWA 
definition).  The courts that reached this conclusion relied 
almost exclusively on legislative history and statutory pur-
pose.  See, e.g., Holland, 373 F. Supp., at 672 (“The forego-
ing [legislative history] compels the Court to conclude that
the former test of navigability was indeed defined away in 
the [CWA]”).  But signals from legislative history cannot re-
but clear statutory text, and the text of the CWA employs 
words that had long been universally understood to reach
only  those  waters  subject  to  Congress’  channels-of-
commerce authority.  See supra, at 15. 

These courts and the EPA had only one textual hook for 
their  interpretation:  In  defining  the  term  “navigable  wa-
ters” as “the waters of the United States,” the CWA seemed 
to drop the term “navigable” from the operative part of the
definition.    Seizing  on  this  phrasing,  the  EPA’s  general 
counsel asserted in 1973 that “the deletion of the word ‘nav-
igable’ eliminates the requirement of navigability.  The only
remaining  requirement,  then,  is  that  pollution  of  waters
covered by the bill must be capable of affecting interstate
commerce.”  1 EPA Gen. Counsel Op. 295 (1973).  Similarly,
the  District  Court  that  vacated  the  Corps’  original  CWA
definition  held,  without  any  analysis  or  citation,  that  the 
term “the waters of the United States” in the CWA is “not 
limited  to  the  traditional  tests  of  navigability.”  National 
Resource Defense Council, 392 F. Supp., at 671. 

That interpretation cannot be right.  For one, the terms 
“navigable  waters”  and  “the  waters  of  the  United  States” 
had long been used synonymously by courts and Congress.
The CWA simply used the terms in the same manner as the
River  and  Harbor  Acts.    Moreover,  no  source  prior  to  the 
CWA  had  ever  asserted  that  the  term  “the  waters  of  the 
United States,” when not modified by “navigable,” reached 
any  water  that  may  affect  interstate  commerce.    Instead, 
The Daniel Ball made clear that “[t]he phrase ‘waters of the