Groundwater Pollution Regulation in the U.S.

By Niki Hornbuckle

Faculty mentor: Dr. Barret Wessel

The primary purpose of our field research was comparing chemical analysis of groundwater samples from the present day with the laboratory analysis taken after underground storage tanks (USTs) leaked pollutants (TPHs, VOCs, PERCs) into the groundwater located under the University of Mary Washington campus, a discovery made in 1993. We read through three WOTUS Supreme Court cases (SWANCC vs. the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rapanos vs. the United States, Maui vs. the Hawaii Wildlife Fund) to appraise how the Clean Water Act has been interpreted judicially in the past, as well as to speculate how the pollution from 1993 might have been handled legally.