Today, the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for a gold-mining company to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons per day of toxic wastewater slurry into an Alaskan lake, killing its fish and other aquatic life.

There are reports from The New York Times,  The Associated Press, Reuters, and the Anchorage Daily News.

The complete ruling is available here, and some background from a previous Coal Tattoo guest blogger, Derek Teaney of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, is available here.

Earthjustice is saying that the ruling shows the need for a reversal of the Bush administration’s changes to the Clean Water Act “fill rule,” or for legislation to reverse those changes.

There is more commentary here from Berkeley Law’s environmental law blog,  and tons more background on the case from ScotusWiki.

I hope to write more in coming days about what this ruling means for mountaintop removal.