Whether the Clean Water Act's permitting requirement applies to discharges into soil or groundwater with a direct hydrological connection to navigable waters

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Clean Water Act requires a permit for the “discharge of pollutants” into navigable waters, defined as “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” 33 U.S.C. §1362(12). The Act leaves the States with primary responsibility to regulate all other forms of pollution, including the discharge of pollutants into soil and groundwater. Petitioners own a pipeline that ruptured and spilled gasoline into the soil and groundwater four years ago. Within days of discovering the leak, petitioners fully repaired the pipeline, and have worked with state authorities ever since to remediate the spill. Some gasoline that spilled into the soil and groundwater has been conveyed by groundwater into nearby navigable waters. In the context of a citizen suit filed two years after the pipe was repaired, the Fourth Circuit concluded that this seepage of gasoline through soil and groundwater constitutes an “ongoing violation” of the Act’s prohibition on unpermitted discharges of pollutants from a point source to navigable waters. The questions presented are: 1. Whether the Clean Water Act’s permitting requirement is confined to discharges from a point source to navigable waters, or whether it also applies to discharges into soil or groundwater whenever there is a “direct hydrological connection” between the groundwater and nearby navigable waters. 2. Whether an “ongoing violation” of the Clean Water Act exists for purposes of the Act’s citizen-suit provision when a point source has permanently ceased discharging pollutants, but some of the pollutants are still reaching navigable water through groundwater.