Opinion ID: 423927
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Discharge of Pollutants.

Text: 119 The district court held that the private defendants' landclearing activities constituted a discharge of a pollutant into the waters of the United States, and that engaging in those activities without a section 404 dredge-and-fill permit was a violation of Section 301(a) of the CWA. 33 U.S.C. § 1311(a). As the district court did, we must look beyond section 301(a) itself, to the statutory and regulatory definitions, in order to determine whether the district court's holding was correct. 120 Section 502(12) defines the term discharge of a pollutant as (a) any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source .... 33 U.S.C. § 1362(12). A point source is defined in section 502(14) as any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, including but not limited to any ... container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel ... from which pollutants are or may be discharged.... 33 U.S.C. § 1362(14). Section 502(6) defines the term pollutant to mean dredged spoil, solid waste, incinerator residue, sewage, garbage, sewage sludge, munitions, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive materials, heat, wrecked or discarded equipment, rock, sand, cellar dirt and industrial, municipal and agricultural waste discharged into water. 33 U.S.C. § 1362(6). The question in this case is whether the landclearing activities were (1) a discharge (2) of a pollutant (3) from a point source (4) into navigable waters. Further, we must determine whether the activities were normal agricultural activities exempted from the permit requirements by 33 U.S.C. § 1344(f). 121 As discussed in Part II, these activities did occur in navigable waters, as that term is defined in the statute. Further, we agree with the district court that the bulldozers and backhoes were point sources, since they collected into windrows and piles material that may ultimately have found its way back into the waters. See Sierra Club v. Abston Construction Co., 620 F.2d 41 (5th Cir.1980) (mining scrap piles may be point sources even though material may not be carried directly to waters from the piles); United States v. Holland, 373 F.Supp. 665, 668 (M.D.Fla.1974) (bulldozers are point sources). The question then is whether these activities constituted a discharge of a pollutant. 122 Emphasizing that the removal of all of the vegetation would destroy the vital ecological function of the wetlands, the district court concluded that the landclearing activities constituted a discharge within the meaning of the CWA. Both the federal and private defendants argue that the mere removal of wetlands vegetation was not a discharge because the term discharge is defined as the addition of pollutants, not the removal of materials. The district court rejected this argument as untenable because it believed that the federal defendants' interpretation would frustrate the ecological purposes of the CWA. 473 F.Supp. at 536. In the court's view, the federal defendants' argument implied that the excavation of [a] ditch 6 feet deep and 100 feet long requires a § 404 permit (is destructive of wetlands) but that the clearing of 20,000 acres of forest wetlands by methods involving only de minimis movement of earth does not (is not destructive of wetlands). Id. 123 The District of Columbia Circuit recently reversed a district court's decision where the lower court had rejected the EPA's view that section 402 of the CWA only covered the addition of pollutants. National Wildlife Federation v. Gorsuch, 693 F.2d 156 (D.C.Cir.1982). Like the district court here, the trial court in National Wildlife found that the EPA's  'overly literal and technical' construction was the 'more tortured' and ... less consonant with Congress' zero-discharge goal. 693 F.2d at 166. As an initial matter, the court of appeals held that the district court had failed to give enough deference to the EPA's construction of the Act. 693 F.2d at 166-67 (citing EPA v. National Crushed Stone Association, 449 U.S. 64, 83, 101 S.Ct. 295, 307, 66 L.Ed.2d 268 (1980)). Besides the fact that Congress had given the EPA substantial discretion in administering the CWA, the court of appeals noted that the agency's construction had been made contemporaneously with the passage of the Act, and ha[d] been consistently adhered to since. 693 F.2d at 107. The court of appeals then went on to note that the district court had paid too much attention to the broad stated purposes of the Act, and too little attention to the legislative history that must inform its view of those purposes. Id. at 171. Finally, noting that regulation by the states of dam-induced pollution was provided for in section 208, 33 U.S.C. § 1218, the National Wildlife court concluded that the EPA's interpretation of the statute was reasonable and therefore it must be respected. See also Missouri ex rel. Ashcroft v. Department of the Army, 672 F.2d 1297, 1304 (8th Cir.1982) (district court did not err in holding that operation of dam did not result in discharge of pollutant as discharge requires addition of pollutant from point source and neither term applied to soil erosion or oxygen content of water). 124 A brief analysis of the district court's factual findings indicates that the dispute about whether the CWA covers the mere removal of vegetation is a false issue in this case. The EPA has explained on appeal that it agrees with the district court that if vegetation or other materials are redeposited in the wetland, that activity is a discharge. [Their] point of disagreement with the district court was with its apparent conclusion that removal activities [were] covered by the Act even when nothing is redeposited on the land. Federal Defendants' Reply Brief at 2 n. 1. 40 The district court's factual findings demonstrate that this is not a mere removal case. The court found that during the clearing process small sloughs were filled in and larger ones partially filled thereby levelling the land. 473 F.Supp. at 536. The landowners' own witness admitted to burying logs in holes that he had dug, and the plaintiffs' witnesses testified that material that would not burn was buried. Since the landclearing activities involved the redeposit of materials, rather than their mere removal, we need not determine today whether mere removal may constitute a discharge under the CWA. 41 Any suggestion made by the district court that the term discharge does cover removal is pure dicta. 125 The word addition, as used in the definition of the term discharge, may reasonably be understood to include redeposit. As the district court recognized, this reading of the definition is consistent with both the purposes and legislative history of the statute. The CWA was designed to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Nation's waters, 33 U.S.C. § 1251(a), and as discussed in Part II, the legislative history indicates that Congress recognized the importance of protecting wetlands as a means of reaching the statutory goals. See, e.g., 3 Legislative History, at 869 (remarks of Sen. Muskie) (quoted by the district court, 473 F.Supp. at 536). There is ample evidence in the record to support the district court's conclusion that the landowners' redepositing activities would significantly alter the character of the wetlands and limit the vital ecological functions served by the tract. 42 Since we have concluded that the term discharge covers the redepositing of materials taken from the wetlands, we hold that the district court correctly decided that the landclearing activities on the Lake Long Tract constituted a discharge within the meaning of the Act. 43 126 Similarly, we agree with the district court, the plaintiffs and the federal defendants that the material discharged in this case was fill, if not dredged, material and hence subject to the Corps' regulation under section 404, as long as the activities did not fall within the section 404(f) exemption. The term fill material is defined in the Corps' regulations as 127 any material used for the primary purpose of replacing an aquatic area with dry land or of changing the bottom elevation of a waterbody. The term does not include any pollutant discharged into the water primarily to dispose of waste, as that activity is regulated under Section 402 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. 128 33 C.F.R. § 323.2(m). The regulations define the discharge of fill material as 129 the addition of fill material into waters of the United States. The term generally includes, without limitation, the following activities: Placement of fill that is necessary to the construction of any structure in a water of the United States; the building of any structure or impoundment requiring rock, sand, dirt, or other material for its construction; site-development fills for recreational, industrial, commercial, residential, and other uses; causeways or road fills; dams and dikes; artificial islands; property protection and/or reclamation devices such as riprap, groins, seawalls, breakwaters, and revetments; beach nourishment; levees; fill for structures such as sewage treatment facilities, intake and outfall pipes associated with power plants and subaqueous utility lines; and artificial reefs. The term does not include plowing, cultivating, seeding and harvesting for the production of food, fiber, and forest products. 130 33 C.F.R. § 323.2(n). 131 As discussed above, the burying of the unburned material, as well as the discing, had the effect of filling in the sloughs on the tract and leveling the land. The landowners insist that any leveling was incidental to their clearing activities and therefore the material was not deposited for the primary purpose of changing the character of the land. The district court found, however, that there had been significant leveling. The plaintiffs' witnesses testified that sloughs that had contained rainwater in the past had been filled in; thus, the activities were changing the bottom elevation of the waterbody. Certainly, the activities were designed to replace the aquatic area with dry land. Accordingly, we hold that the district court correctly concluded that the landowners were discharging fill material into the wetlands. 132 The district court also found that removal of the vegetation constituted dredging. The regulations define dredged material as material that is excavated or dredged from waters of the United States. 33 C.F.R. § 323.2(k). The district court reasoned that since the vegetation was part of the wetlands, it was also part of the waters of the United States; therefore, removal of the vegetation constituted dredging. 133 The landowners emphasize that dredging is excavation. They argue that the vegetation is a wetland indicator, not a part of the wetland itself; therefore, the removal of the vegetation from the surface of the wetland is not dredging. The federal defendants agree with the landowners that the removal of vegetation from above ground is not dredging, but they do not view this as a crucial issue in this case because they agree with the district court that the landowners were discharging fill material. Federal Defendants' Brief at 19 n. 17. We note that there was testimony that the landowners' activities included the digging of ditches and holes, which would constitute dredging even under the landowners' interpretation of the regulation. Like the federal defendants, however, we do not believe that a decision whether there was a discharge of dredged material is necessary here, since we have concluded that there was a discharge of fill material. 134