Photo: treesfoundation.org
Aux États-Unis, le ruissellement a eu la vie belle jusqu'à date malgré le Clean Water Act. Le ruissellement de source agricole est exempté aussi. Et le ruissellement de boues venant des routes tracées dans les forêts pour fin de coupe n'étaient pas considérées comme de la pollution jusqu'à ce qu'un juge fédéral tranche en faveur des saumons mardi le 17 août 2010.
Dorénavant, les routes désservant les coupes forestières dans les forêts fédérales, de l'état et privées devront respecter les règlements du Clean Water Act.
Le jugement va sûrement créer un précédent judiciaire, car plusieurs chemins forestiers dans les forêts fédérales servent maintenant à autre chose que la foresterie, comme le tourisme et les loisirs.
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"Appeals court: mud from logging roads is pollution
A federal appeals court Tuesday decided that mud washing off logging roads is pollution and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to write regulations to reduce the amount that reaches salmon streams. A conservation group that filed the lawsuit said if the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stands, logging roads on federal, state and private lands across the West will eventually have to be upgraded to meet Clean Water Act standards. "Those roads historically have gotten a free pass," said Mark Riskedahl of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center in Portland. "This is not rocket science. There are some very low-cost, low-maintenance steps folks can take to remedy this problem."
A three-judge panel of the court found that the sediment exceeded Clean Water Act limits, and should be regulated by EPA as a point source of industrial pollution. The judges rejected arguments from the state that the sediment falls under exemptions granted by Congress and less stringent regulations for things like agricultural runoff. Chris Winter, an attorney for the CRAG Law Center in Portland, which represented the center, said the EPA has long recognized sediment as one of the leading sources of water pollution in the country, and that it is harmful to fish, but has chosen not to address the issue of logging roads.
The issue is likely to bring further litigation on national forests, because so little logging goes on there, and roads originally built for logging are now used for other things, including recreation, said Andy Stahl of the conservation group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics."
Excerpts from article written by Jeff Barnard for The Associated Press published here: http://www.pe.com/ap_news/California/OR_Logging_Roads_Pollution_518117C.shtml
Why does somebody have to sue to have the obvious enforced now?
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