US Air Force avoids PFAS water cleanup, citing Supreme Court's Chevron ruling

There was a supreme court case in Sweden very recently that covered PFAS pollution from the air force, with a ruling that defined how the chain of responsibility look like. The local civilians living in the area sued the local government operated water treatment plant. The local government in turned blamed the military, and the military refused to take responsibility. The court decided that regardless of what the military decide, local government are responsible to their citizen in terms of providing pollution free water. Local government can try to sue the military, but it does not change the ultimate responsibility they got to their citizens.

The government has a responsibility to protect the public from pollution. If the cost come from the military budget, national government budget or local government budget is something the different departments can fight over, but the outcome is still the same.

The Supreme Court made the right decision.

Unlike the hyperbolic coverage in the press - the decision did not say that judges are now responsible for making regulation, rather than experts in regulatory agencies.

What they said is that now, if a statute is ambiguous, a regulatory agency makes a regulation that falls within that ambiguity, and someone files a lawsuit, the courts can play their standard, established role in resolving the ambiguity and figuring out the intent of Congress and determining whether the regulation is authorized by statute.

Previously, Chevron deference required the courts to defer to the agency's interpretation of the statute, regardless of how unreasonable that interpretation was.

This was abused by people who used it as a loophole to push through regulation which they knew would not be politically viable in Congress. Chevon deference allowed an end-run around democracy. And also led to uncertainty - because these regulations were politically controversial and not supported by law, just by executive branch fiat, they are prone to being revoked whenever the party holding the presidency changes.

If a topic is important enough, Congress can always resolve any of these issues by amending the relevant statute.

All of these controversies over Supreme Court decisions really come down to people who are advocating for positions and regulations which are unachievable through the normal political, legislative process in the US getting upset that the Supreme Court is not allowing them to enact these policies through backdoors and loopholes rather than the democratic process.

Makes total sense. The Air Force is supposed to defend the country not to care about the health of its population. :-p

We will soon see what a huge and harmful deal the recent Chevron ruling is. The Supreme Court needs to be gutted.

Why the heck is one department of the Executive Branch arguing against another when the latter is the one with the specific expertise to judge such a thing?!?!

This is just the beginning of the dysfunction created by the Supreme Court. Hope you are wealthy enough to live in away from industry and have good water filtration systems.