About 16 months after SCOTUS handed down its opinion that discharges that travel through groundwater before reaching navigable waters may require Clean Water Act permits if the end result is the "functional equivalent of a discharge," the litigants that lent their names to the decision received the trial court's opinion on remand. After implementing SCOTUS' guidance, the district court reached the same decision it did in 2014: The county of Maui was required to obtain an NPDES permit for its wastewater injection wells at a nearly five-decade-old facility. Haw. Wildlife Fund et al. v. Cty. of Maui, 2021 WL 3007168 (July 15, 2021). Continue reading >