Ninth Circuit Broadly Interprets Clean Water Act Jurisdiction

On February 1, 2018, the Ninth Circuit published Hawai’i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui, which applied Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting requirements to well wastewater injections that migrate to the Pacific Ocean through groundwater.

The case centered on the County of Maui's discharge of effluent from its wastewater treatment plant. Under its practices at issue in the case, the County would treat sewage and then either sell it to customers for irrigation purposes or inject it into wells for disposal. In June 2013, federal and state agencies conducted a tracer dye test and determined that the well discharges were reaching the Pacific Ocean in approximately 84-days through groundwater.