Miccosukee Tribe v. South Florida Water Management District
The Clean Water Act (CWA) prohibits the discharge of pollutants from a point source into navigable waters without a permit. "Discharge of a pollutant" is defined as "any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source." This case involves the application of this prohibition to a water pump that moves water from one section of the Everglades to another.
Broward County includes Fort Lauderdale and extends down to North Miami. Its western portion has been a rapidly expanding area of the state. To manage drainage in the area, the Army Corps of Engineers has built a canal, the C-11, which drains the C-11 basin in western Broward. Levees have been constructed that separate the C-11 basin from a water conservation area further to the west, Water Conservation Area - 3A (WCA-3A). The S-9 pump station pumps water from the C-11 canal through three pipes into the WCA-3A. Without S-9's operation, western Broward would flood within days. The water being pumped contains higher quantities of phosphorus than would be found in WCA-3A without the pumping.
No one disputes that the pipes are point sources within the meaning of the CWA, that phosphorus is a pollutant, and that both the C-11 basin and the WCA-3A are navigable waters. The Water District argues that simply by moving water from one basin to another, the pumping station has not "added" any pollutant within the meaning of the Act. Even if this argument is not sound in all cases, the C-11 basin and the WCA-3A were once part of a single broad expanse of the Everglades, and their surface and ground waters intermingled freely. In that case, the pump is mimicking what nature might have done anyway.
The 11th Circuit rejected the Water District arguments and found that it was operating the S-9 pump station without a, in violation of the CWA. It did, however, lift the district court injunction ordering the cessation of pumping until a permit had been obtained, citing the great public interest in avoiding the flooding of western Broward County.
Question Presented:
Whether petitioner's longstanding practice of pumping accumulated water from a water collection canal to a water conservation area within the Florida Everglades constitutes an addition of a
pollutant from a point source for purposes of the CWA, where the water contains a pollutant but the pumping station source itself adds no pollutants to the water being pumped.
