Review Question: What Type of Judge?

Please answer all the questions below. Explain your answer detail; please write at least 200 words.

John Rapanos, a real estate developer, sought to fill in a wetland on his property in Michigan in order to build a condominium. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality refused him permission to do so, saying that the area was a protected wetland under the Clean Water Act. Under the Clean Water Act, the government is allowed to regulate pollution into any “navigable water.” Rapanos argued that the site for the condominium was separated by a four-foot-wide earthen barrier from a ditch that emptied into another ditch that ultimately emptied into Lake St. Clair, a navigable water. The government argued that under regulations issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, wetlands are covered by the Clean Water Act as long as they are adjacent to traditionally navigable waters. On appeal, the judges decided that the word “navigable” in the Clean Water Act means that only water with a continuous surface connection with a water of the United States can be regulated, not water with occasional or intermittent flows into navigable waters.

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