Experts can comment on Sackett v. EPA

David Dana is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He is a leading environmental law scholar with expertise in property, land use and professional responsibility and the director of Northwestern Law's program on Sustainability, Food and Animal Law. To arrange an interview, contact Max Witynski at max.witynski@northwestern.edu.

Quote from Professor Dana

"The Sackett majority opinion adopts a very constrained interpretation of waters of the United States, which essentially writes the key word 'adjacent' out of the statute and excludes a tremendous amount of wetlands from federal jurisdiction. As Justice Kavanaugh argued in his concurrence, Justice Alito’s majority opinion is not faithful to the actual text of the Clean Water Act. After this decision, state law will be more important than ever in the protection of wetlands and water quality."

Sera Young is an associate professor of anthropology and global health studies at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research (IPR). Her research focuses on water and food insecurity. Young and colleagues developed the Water Insecurity Experiences Scales to provide a measurement of global water insecurity that takes human experiences into account. She can be reached at sera.young@northwestern.edu.

Quote from Professor Young

"This decision will jeopardize water quality for millions. A ruling that does not come down hard on the side of protecting water security is a ruling that has forgotten the value of water. Water is a precious — and finite — resource, without which we cannot live."

Aaron Packman is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and director of Northwestern’s Center for Water Research. He is one of the world’s leading experts on water system dynamics, contamination, scarcity, ecosystems and management. He can be reached directly at a-packman@northwestern.edu or by emailing Amanda Morris at amandamo@northwestern.edu.

Quote from Professor Packman

"This supreme court decision is absolutely incorrect from a scientific perspective and will result in widespread degradation of the nation's freshwater supplies.  We know definitively that waterways are connected to source water wetlands in multiple ways, and eliminating source water regions will definitely impair the navigable waterways of the U.S."