The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear a challenge by the South Florida Water Management District (District) to the Clean Water Act case that it lost to Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. Friends and the Tribe won at both the US District and Appeals court levels.

The case involves the pumping of polluted water into the Everglades by the South Florida Water Management District. The S-9 is a pump station which back pumps polluted water from the C-11 canal basin in Broward County into the Everglades. The discharge has caused severe damage in the Everglades especially in Water Conservation Area 3A - home to the small Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. The Federal District Court held that a federal pollution discharge permit is required. Such a permit would set strict limits on how much pollution the District can discharge.

The Supreme Court's interest in this case comes at a time when the State of Florida has revealed its utter lack of resolve in protecting the Everglades by waiving the deadlines it agreed to a decade ago to clean up the polluted water it discharges into the Everglades. Though the District claims it isn't the source of the pollution, it is the entity moving it into the Everglades and has done precious little to address the real sources.

The South Florida Water Management District hopes to reverse the lower courts' rulings and establish the Everglades as its principle dumping ground for waste water it has no intention of cleaning. If the Court were to rule that the District can move water wherever they want with out regard to the damage it causes the $8 billion dollar Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan will become little more than a large sewer project.

Friends welcomes the opportunity to highlight for the Court the importance of federal oversight to hold in check its faithless State partner in protecting and restoring the Everglades. That faithlessness was nowhere more apparent than in this last legislative session where money and promises from the Sugar industry to politicians bought them ten more years of polluting and millions of dollars in new taxes on Florida citizens to help clean it up.

The Court should ultimately affirm the ruling of the lower courts and clarify for the dozens of misled water districts from around the country who came to the District's aid that their normal reasonable operations will not need the degree of federal oversight that the South Florida Water Management District has demonstrated it requires.