Court Opinion

ID: 9498668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:24:35.46289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:59.724390
License: Public Domain

*182DICLERICO, District Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I concur with the result reached by Judge Lipez in his opinion (hereinafter “the opinion”), affirming the district court’s decision that Clean Water Act jurisdiction extends to the target sites involved in this case. However, I do so based on an interpretation of the record' that differs from that of the opinion. Consequently, I must respectfully disagree with some of the opinion’s reasoning in support of the result. I come to the same result based, in part, on different reasoning.
I interpret the record to support the conclusion that there is a hydrological connection, which constitutes a significant nexus, between each of the three target sites and the Weweantic River. Because each of the sites has a significant nexus through a hydrological connection with a navigable-in-fact . water, the Commerce Clause supports CWA jurisdiction over the sites. I disagree, however, with the opinion’s interpretation of the record to the extent it is based on a theory that the connection between each target site and the river depends upon diffusion of water through wetlands, other than the target sites themselves, either as part of the connecting “tributary system” or as a link or links in a series of “tributary systems.”21 I further disagree with the opinion’s rea-soiling that the EPA’s regulation, 40 C.F.R. § 230.3(s), can be reasonably interpreted to include other wetlands as part of the “tributary systems” that constitute the hydrological connections to the Weweantic River. As I view the record, the hydrological connections that are pertinent to the EPA’s regulation do not include other wetlands, but instead are composed in each case of a system of tributaries from the target site to the river, although some of the connecting tributaries flow through other wetlands or bogs.
In my view, because the record does not support the opinion’s description of the hydrological connections between the Fos-dick Street and Forest/Fuller Street sites and the river, the issue of whether the regulation can reasonably be interpreted to cover that circumstance need not and should not be reached or decided in this case. That issue was not raised before or addressed by the district court. On appeal, the issue was raised only belatedly, and in a perfunctory manner, and was not addressed by the EPA.22
The EPA describes the connection from the Johnsons’ Fosdick Street site to the Weweantic River as follows: “All of these wetlands drained into an unnamed perennial stream that flowed through cranberry bogs south of the reservón* and then into a pond at Maxim Corner. The pond drains through a channel to Rocky Meadow Brook, approximately one mile upstream *183from the start of the Weweantic River.” (Citations omitted, and emphasis added.) The EPA describes the Forest/Fuller Street site connection as follows: “Bog A and the surrounding wetlands drain via an unnamed stream into the Log Swamp Reservoir on the southern side of the site. The Log Swamp Reservoir drains into a stream that flows through' a continuous series of bogs, wetlands, and ponds, before becoming the Rocky Meadow Brook.” (Citations omitted, and emphasis added).
The components of the “tributary systems” that constitute the hydrological connections between the Fosdick Street and Forest/Fuller Street sites and the river are described by the EPA as streams, ponds, and brooks, with an additional channel for the Fosdick Street site. No factual basis is presented by the EPA for the conclusion that either connecting system depends upon wetlands other than the target sites, as the connections are described in the opinion, and the EPA has not presented an argument to this effect. Importantly, the district court relied on the EPA’s memorandum and the EPA’s evidence presented in support of its motion for summary judgment and concluded that “there is a sufficient basis for the United States to exercise jurisdiction because the undisputed evidence shows that the three wetlands are hydrologically connected to the navigable Weweantic River by nonnav-igable tributaries.” Based on the EPA’s evidence and its theory of the case, the district court concluded that the connections from the sites to the river were through tributaries, not through other wetlands or bogs.23 The ■ EPA’s hydrology expert, Scott Horsley, described the connection between the Fosdick Street site and the river as “a perennial stream,” which ran through bogs to the pond at Maxim Corner. Horsley’s description of the connection between the Forest/Fuller Street site and the river, taken by itself, might be interpreted to include “bog systems” within that connecting series. However, the map of all three sites, which Horsley prepared, depicts a continuous blue line from each site to the river, suggesting that the hydrological connections are through streams and brooks rather than diffused through wetlands. More importantly, the EPA interpreted Horsley’s opinion to mean that the connection is “a stream that flows through a continuous series of bogs, wetlands, and ponds, before becoming Rocky Meadow Brook.” The district court relied on the EPA’s interpretation, and the Johnsons do not dispute it.
In this circumstance, where the district court adopted the EPA’s interpretation of the evidence and where the Johnsons do not dispute the EPA’s interpretation, that interpretation, in my opinion, must control. Because, as I view the record, the EPA does not include wetlands as part of the connecting series constituting a “tributary system,” we need not resolve the difficult question of whether the EPA’s regulation could properly extend its .jurisdiction to a wetland site connected to a navigable-in-fact river through a system of waters that includes other wetlands.
If I had interpreted the record to show that the hydrological connections for the target sites were dependent on other wetlands, meaning other wetlands within the *184tributary systems as described in the opinion, I would have joined the dissent on that issue. However, in the absence of other wetlands within the connecting “tributary systems,” the issue does not arise in this case. For that reason, I respectfully refrain from joining in the opinion to the extent that it describes the connections between the target sites and the river to include wetlands other than the target sites and to the extent that it holds that the EPA reasonably interpreted subpart (s)(5) to mean “tributary systems” which include other wetlands either as part of a tributary system or as links along, a series of tributary systems.
Because I conclude that the EPA did not interpret subpart (s)(5) to include other wetlands as part of the tributary systems that constitute the hydrological connections between the target sites and the river, I concur that the EPA has reasonably interpreted its regulation in the context of this case, albeit based on my interpretation of the record. In all other respects, I concur with the reasoning and conclusions in the opinion.

. There is no disagreement over the fact that the "tributary system” connecting the Cross Street site to the Weweantic River does not include other wetlands within the connecting system. There is disagreement as to the components of the systems that connect the Fos-dick Street and ForesVFuller sites to the river.

. Based on the opinion's interpretation of the record, whether the EPA’s regulation, § 230.3(s), would extend the CWA to wetlands as described in the opinion is an important issue that had to be addressed. However, because the issue was not raised or addressed below, this court did not have the benefit of the EPA's position. In my view, the case should have been remanded to the district court for development and clarification of that issue. In particular, the EPA should have been given the opportunity, in the first instance, to address the interpretation of its. own regulation in the context of the record as interpreted in the opinion. However, my colleagues did not agree to a remand.

. The opinion interprets the EPA’s regulation, § 230.3(s), to define “tributary” and "wetland” as mutually exclusive waters: if a water is a tributary, it is not a wetland and vice versa. Under this interpretation, therefore, because the district court found the sites were connected to the river by tributaries, the connections necessarily do not include wetlands.