## Facts

- Several coal strip-mining operators worked near Daniel Creek, a tributary of the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.
- Mining removed overburden and placed it into “spoil piles,” which were highly erodible if not reclaimed.
- Rainfall runoff and pit drainage carried sediment and acidic materials from spoil piles into nearby waters, causing siltation and acid deposits in Daniel Creek.
- The miners at times built sediment basins to intercept runoff, but heavy rains could cause overflows that carried collected pollutants into Daniel Creek.
- It was undisputed that pollutants from mining operations entered the creek during excess rainfall events.
- Sierra Club filed a citizen suit under the Clean Water Act; Alabama intervened, alleging unlawful discharges from “point sources” without required authorization.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the miners, reasoning that rainfall-driven runoff was not a point-source discharge because it was not the result of direct operator action such as pumping or draining into the creek.

## Issues

1. Whether pollution reaching a creek through rainfall-driven runoff and drainage from spoil piles and sediment basins can constitute a “point source” discharge under the Clean Water Act.
2. Whether genuine disputes of material fact existed regarding the presence of discernible, confined, and discrete conveyances, making summary judgment improper.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit reversed the summary judgment and remanded.
- The court held the district court construed “point source” too narrowly by effectively requiring a direct, mechanical act of discharge.
- The court concluded the record presented genuine issues of material fact as to whether the miners’ activities created or used discernible, confined, and discrete conveyances carrying pollutants into navigable waters.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Clean Water Act, a “point source” includes any discernible, confined, and discrete conveyance from which pollutants are discharged, and is not limited to pipes or pump-driven releases.
- Stormwater or surface runoff may be treated as nonpoint pollution when it remains diffuse and uncollected, but it may become a point-source discharge when human activity collects, channels, or directs the runoff through ditches, basins, channels, or altered drainage features.
- The involvement of natural forces such as rainfall does not categorically remove a discharge from point-source regulation when man-made or man-altered conveyances are alleged to carry pollutants to waters.
- Summary judgment is improper where evidence could support findings that mining-created features functioned as discrete conveyances and where the causal link between those features and pollutant entries is factually disputed.

## Conclusion

The court required further proceedings because runoff from strip mining can fall within Clean Water Act point-source controls when mining operations collect or channel polluted runoff through identifiable conveyances, and the existence and operation of such conveyances raised triable factual questions.


Sierra Club v. Abston Constr. Co., 620 F.2d 41 (5th Cir. 1980)