Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-260_jifl.pdf
Page Number: 36

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

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

ocean some distance from the shore.”  Id., at 342.  Both the 
EPA and the HDOH received and submitted comments on 
the report without any mention of a need for permitting dis-
charges  from  the  wells.  Id.,  at  140.    Six  years  later,  the 
HDOH issued an NPDES permit to the facility—but not for 
the wells.  (The permit covered separate discharges to the 
Honokowai Stream.)  Id., at 141, 223–224.  And in a May
1985 NPDES Compliance Monitoring Report, the EPA con-
cluded that the County was operating in compliance with
the permit, because all effluent was entering the injection 
wells—and was thus destined for groundwater rather than
for  navigable  waters  or  for  use  in  irrigation.  Id.,  at  141, 
222.  In 1994, HDOH again informed the EPA that “all ex-
perts agree that the wastewater does enter the ocean.”  Id., 
at 369.  And again—nothing from the federal authorities. 

Thus, despite nearly five decades of notice that effluent 
from  the  facility  would  make,  or was  making,  its  way  via 
groundwater to the ocean, neither the EPA nor the HDOH 
required NPDES permitting for the Lahaina wells.  App. to 
Pet. for Cert. 138, 143.  Indeed, none of the more than 6,600 
underground  injection  wells  in  Hawaii  currently  has  an 
NPDES permit.1 

In  2012,  however,  as  the  Court  recounts,  respondents
filed  a  citizen  suit  claiming  that  the  Lahaina  facility  was 
violating  the  Clean  Water  Act  by  discharging  pollutants
into the ocean without a permit.  The District Court granted 
summary judgment against the County on the issue of lia-
bility  because  pollutants  “can  be  directly  traced  from  the 
injection wells to the ocean.”  24 F. Supp. 3d 980, 998 (Haw. 
2014) (emphasis deleted).

The  parties  then  entered  into  a  conditional  settlement 

—————— 

1 EPA,  FY  2018  State  Underground  Injection  Control  Inventory, 
https://www.epa.gov/uic/uic-injection-well-inventory;  EPA,  Hawaii 
NPDES  Permits:  Draft  and  Final  NPDES  Permits,  https:// 
www.epa.gov/npdes-permits/hawaii-npdes-permits.