Defend Rural America:
Supreme Court gives timber industry victory against environmentalists
March 20, 2013 | 12:32 pm
The
Supreme Court sided with the timber industry against environmentalists
today in a ruling that loggers do not need a special Environmental
Protection Agency permit because of gravel and dirt that can fall from
logging roads into waterways.
The
decision overturned a lower-court ruling that the runoff is the same as
other industrial pollution and therefore requires a permit under the
EPA’s Clean Water Act, according to Fox News.
The
timber industry said it would cost millions of dollars to get a permit
for every logging site, and could even put the industry out of business.
Environmentalists
argued that the regulations would not impose a heavy administrative
burden, and that logging runoff hurts salmon spawning, Forbes reported in November.
But
even the EPA disagreed with the lower-court ruling and recently changed
its rules related to logging runoff, placing it in the same category as
runoff from a farmer’s field and not industrial pollution.
The
consolidated cases in the decision are Decker v. Northwest
Environmental Defense Center and Georgia-Pacific West, Inc. v. Northwest
Environmental Defense Center.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs
-- is to be ruled by evil men! -- Plato
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