## Facts

- An environmental nonprofit brought a Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suit challenging stormwater runoff from Oregon logging roads.
- Stormwater was collected by engineered drainage features on forest roads, including ditches, culverts, and channels, and then discharged into streams and rivers.
- The plaintiff alleged the discharges carried pollutants, including sediment such as rock and sand, into navigable waters.
- State forestry officials, a county, and timber companies did not obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for the discharges.
- The district court dismissed, reasoning the discharges were exempt under EPA’s Silvicultural Rule and/or stormwater regulations.
- The plaintiff appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether stormwater runoff from logging roads, when collected and discharged through ditches, culverts, and channels into navigable waters, is a discharge of pollutants from a “point source” under the CWA.
2. Whether EPA’s Silvicultural Rule and stormwater regulations exempt those discharges from NPDES permitting.
3. Whether such discharges are stormwater “associated with industrial activity” requiring NPDES permits under the then-applicable EPA stormwater regulations.

## Decision

- The court reversed the district court’s dismissal and remanded.
- The court held that stormwater runoff collected and conveyed through ditches, culverts, and channels and discharged to streams or rivers is a discharge from a CWA “point source.”
- The court held the Silvicultural Rule did not categorically exempt the challenged discharges.
- The court held that, under the then-applicable stormwater regulations, the discharges were stormwater associated with industrial activity and required NPDES permits.

## Legal Principles

- Under the CWA, a “point source” includes any discernible, confined, and discrete conveyance, expressly including ditches and channels; man-made drainage systems that collect and convey stormwater to surface waters can qualify.
- A discharge’s connection to silvicultural activity does not, by itself, convert a point-source discharge into nonpoint-source “natural runoff” for permitting purposes.
- Where EPA stormwater regulations treat a category of stormwater as “associated with industrial activity,” discharges within that category require NPDES permits absent a valid regulatory exclusion.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that logging-road stormwater directed through engineered ditches, culverts, and channels into navigable waters constitutes a point-source discharge under the Clean Water Act and, under the regulations in effect at the time, required NPDES permits; it reversed the dismissal and remanded for further proceedings.


Nw. Env’t Def. Ctr. v. Brown, 640 F.3d 1063 (9th Cir. 2011)