Hawai'i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui

881 F.3d 754
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 1, 2018
Docket15-17447
StatusPublished

This text of 881 F.3d 754 (Hawai'i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hawai'i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui, 881 F.3d 754 (9th Cir. 2018).

Opinion

OPINION

D.W. NELSON, Senior Circuit Judge:

The County of Maui (“County”) appeals the district court’s summary judgment rulings finding the County violated the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) when it discharged pollutants from its wells into the Pacific Ocean, and further finding it had fair notice of its violations. Hawai'i Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club—Maui Group, Surfrider Foundation, and West ,Maui Preservation Association (“Associations”) urge us to uphold these rulings. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court.

BACKGROUND

1, The Lahaina Wells and the Effluent Injections

The County owns and operates four wells at the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility (“LWRF”), the principal municipal wastewater treatment plant for West Maui. Wells 1 and 2 were installed in 1979 as part of the original 1975 plant design, and Wells 3 and 4 were added in 1985 as part of an expansion project. Although constructed initially to serve as a backup disposal method for water reclamation, the wells have since become' the County’s primary means of effluent disposal into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean.

The LWRF receives approximately 4 million gallons of sewage per day from a collection system serving approximately 40,000 people. That sewage is treated at the.Facility and then either sold to customers for irrigation purposes or injected into the wells for disposal: The County disposes of almost all the sewage it receives—it injects approximately 3 to 5 million gallons of treated wastewater per day into the groundwater via its wells.

That some of the treated effluent then reaches the Pacific Ocean is undisputed. The County expressly conceded below and its expert confirmed that wastewater injected into Wells 1 and 2 enters the Pacific Ocean. The Associations submitted various studies and expert declarations establishing a connection between Wells 3 and 4 and the ocean. Although the County quibbles with how much effluent enters the ocean and by what paths the pollutants travel to get there, it concedes that effluent from all four wells reaches the ocean.

The County has known this since the Facility’s inception. The record establishes the County considered building an ocean outfall to dispose of effluent directly into the ocean but decided against it because it would be too harmful to the coastal waters. It opted instead for injection wells it knew would affect these waters indirectly. When the Facility underwent environmental review in February 1973, the County’s consultant—Dr. Michael Chun—stated effluent that was not used for reclamation purposes would be injected into the wells and that these pollutants would then enter the ocean some distance from the shore. The County further confirmed this in its reassessment of the Facility in 1991.

According to the County’s expert, when the wells inject 2.8 million gallons of effluent per day, the flow of effluent into the ocean is about 3,456 gallons per meter of coastline per day—roughly the equivalent of installing a permanently-running garden hose at every meter along the 800 meters of coastline. About one out of every seven gallons of groundwater entering the ocean near the LWRF is comprised of effluent from the wells.

2. The Tracer Dye Study

In June 2013, the U.S. ■ Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”), the Hawaii Department of Health (“HDOH”), the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center,'and researchers at the University of Hawáii conducted a study (the “Tracer Dye Study” or “Study”) on Wells 2, 3, and 4 to.gather data on, among other things, the “hydrological connections between the injected treated wastewater effluent and the coastal waters.” The Study involved placing tracer dye into Wells 2, 3, and 4, and monitoring the submarine seeps off Kahekili Beach' to see if and when the dye would appear in the ocean.

The Study concluded “a hydrogeologic connection exists between ... Wells 3 and 4 and the nearby coastal waters of West Maui.” Eighty-four days after injection, tracer dye introduced to Wells 3 and 4 began to emerge “from very nearshore seafloor along North Kaanapali Beach,” near Kahekili Beach Park, about a half-mile southwest of the LWRF. According to the Study, the effluent travels in this southwesterly path “due to geologic con-, trols that include a hydraulic barrier created by valley fills to the northwest.” The Study found “64 percent of the treated wastewater injected into [Wells 3 and 4] currently discharges [into the ocean].” It further concluded “[t]he major discharge areas are confined to two clusters, only several meters wide, with very little discharge [occurring] in between and around them.”

Tracer dye from Well 2 was not detected in the ocean. But this was because Wells 3 and 4—located between Well 2 and the areas in the ocean where the wastewater discharges—“inject the majority of effluent,” which likely diverted the injected wastewater from Well 2 into taking “a different path other than directly towards the submarine springs” where the waste-water from Wells 3 and 4 discharges. If Well 2 were to receive most of the effluent at the Facility, that effluent would also take the southwesterly path taken by the wastewater from Wells 3 and 4. And “[because Well 1 is located in very close proximity to Well 2, .,, the [T]racer [S]tudy’s predictions for the fate of effluent from Well 2 can be used to predict the fate of effluent from Well 1,” according to the Associations’ expert Dr. Jean Moran.

3. The District Court’s Summary Judgment Rulings

The County appeals three of the district court’s summary judgment rulings. In the first, the district court found the County liable as to Wells 3 and 4 for discharging effluent through groundwater and into the ocean without the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit required by the CWA. Haw. Wildlife Fund v. Cty. of Maui, 24 F.Supp.3d 980, 1005 (D. Haw. 2014). The court based its decision on three independent grounds: (1) the County “indirectly discharge^] a pollutant into the ocean through a groundwater conduit,’’ (2) the-groundwater is a “point source” under the CWA, and (3) the groundwater is a “navigable water” under the Act. Id. at 993, 999,1005.

In its second order, the district court held the County liable as to Wells 1 and 2 based largely on the same reasons it found the County liable on Wells 3 and 4. Haw. Wildlife Fund v. Cty. of Maui, Civil No. 12-00198 SOM/BMK, 2015 WL 328227, at *5-6 (D. Haw. Jan. 23, 2015). The court acknowledged that no study confirms the “point of entry into the ocean of flow from [W]ells 1 and 2.” Id. at *2. But it nonetheless held against the County after “repeatedly confirm[ing] at the [summary judgment] hearing ... that the County was expressly conceding that pollutants introduced by the County into [W]ells 1 and 2 were making their way to the ocean.” Id.

Finally, the district court found the County could not claim a due process violation because it had fair notice under the plain language of the CWA that it could not discharge effluent via groundwater into the ocean.

This appeal followed.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

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Bluebook (online)
881 F.3d 754, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hawaii-wildlife-fund-v-county-of-maui-ca9-2018.