United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Incl., et al.

The Clean Water Act prohibits any discharge of dredged or fill materials into “navigable waters” unless authorized by a permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps). Construing the Act to cover all “freshwater wetlands” that were adjacent to other covered waters, the Corps issued a regulation defining such wetlands as “those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support and which under normal circumstances do support a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted to life in saturated soil conditions.” After the respondent began placing fill material on its property near the shores the Corps filed a suit to stop it from filling its property without the Corps’ permission. Finding that respondent’s property was characterized by the presence of vegetation requiring saturated soil conditions for growth, that the source of such soil conditions was ground water, and that the wetland on the property was adjacent to a body of navigable water, the District Court held that the property was wetland subject to the Corps’ permit authority. The Court of Appeals reversed, construing the corps’ regulation to exclude from the category of adjacent wetlands – and hence from that of “waters of the United States” – wetlands that are not subject to flooding by adjacent navigable waters at a frequency sufficient to support the growth of aquatic vegetation. The Court of Appeal held that the Corps’ authority had to be narrowly construed to avoid taking without just compensation. The respondent’s property was not with the Corps’ jurisdiction, because its emiaquatic characteristics were not the result of frequent flooding by the nearby navigable waters, and that therefore respondent was free to fill the property without obtaining a permit. The Supreme Court interpreted the Clean Water Act under the aspects of language, policies and history. It decided that the Corps had acted reasonably in interpreting the Act to require permits for the discharge of fill material into wetlands adjacent to the “waters of the United States.” The regulation in which the Corps had embodied this interpretation by its terms included the wetlands on respondent’s property within the class of waters that may not be filled without a Permit. There was no reason to interpret the regulation more narrowly than its terms would indicate. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals was reversed.