SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
LOS ANGELES COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT v. NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, INC
Decided January 8, 2013
We granted certiorari on the following question: Under the CWA, does a “discharge of pollutants” occur when polluted water “flows from one portion of a river that is navigable water of the United States, through a concrete channel or other engineered improvement in the river,” and then “into a lower portion of the same river”? Pet. for Cert. i. See 567 U. S. ___ (2012). As noted above, see supra, at 1, the parties, as well as the United States as amicus curiae, agree that the answer to this question is “no.”
That agreement is hardly surprising, for we held in Miccosukee that
the transfer of polluted water between “two parts of the same water body” does not constitute a discharge of pollutants under the CWA. 541 U. S., at 109–112. We derived that determination from the CWA’s text, which defines the term “discharge of a pollutant” to mean “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” 33 U. S. C. §1362(12) (emphasis added). Under a common understanding of the meaning of the word “add,” no pollutants are “added” to a water body when water is merely transferred between different portions of that water body. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 24 (2002) (“add” means “to join, annex, or unite (as one thing to another) so as to bring about an increase (as in number, size, or importance) or so as to form one aggregate”). “As the Second Circuit [aptly] put it . . . , ‘
f one takes a ladle of soup from a pot, lifts it above the pot, and pours it back into the pot, one has not “added” soup or anything else to the pot.’ ” Miccosukee, 541 U. S., at 109–110 (quoting Catskill Mountains Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Inc. v. New York, 273 F. 3d 481, 492 (CA2 2001)).
