Bad ruling for environment

Thursday, June 25, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned its back on the environment Monday when a 6-3 majority gave a gold mining company permission to dump its toxic waste in an Alaskan lake.

In a narrow interpretation of the law — so narrow that it defies common sense — the court ruled that the Clean Water Act does not prohibit the Army Corps of Engineers from permitting mining companies to dump waste in bodies of water as long as the discharge can be classified as “fill material” that changes the bottom elevation of the water. The toxicity of the waste inexplicably did not factor into the majority’s decision.

Trip Van Noppen, president of the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, put the court’s ruling in proper perspective when he told The New York Times: “If a mining company can turn Lower Slate Lake in Alaska into a lifeless dump, other polluters with solids in their wastewater can potentially do the same to any water body in America.”

This case has exposed an alarming loophole in the Clean Water Act that should be closed by Congress immediately. Otherwise, mining companies and polluters from other industries could interpret the ruling as giving them license to turn the nation’s lakes, rivers and streams into toxic cesspools.

That was not the intent of the Clean Water Act when it was enacted in 1972. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court minority, clearly understood this. Quoting from the act itself, she wrote that its intent was to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity” of bodies of water in the U.S.

Does mining company Coeur Alaska Inc. intend to maintain the integrity of Lower Slate Lake? The answer is a resounding “No.” As Ginsburg wrote, the company plans to dump into the lake 4.5 million tons of solid tailings whose contents will include aluminum, copper, lead and mercury.

All of the lake’s fish would be killed. For that we will have the Supreme Court to thank.