Wetlands case results in 5 lengthy opinions

The justices' ruling created a test for building on the endangered habitats.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the government can block development on hundreds of millions of acres of wetlands, even on land miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a significant connection to the waterways.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in his first major environmental case, came up one vote short of dramatically limiting the scope of the landmark Clean Water Act.
At the same time, property rights advocates won a new test for when wetlands can be regulated. Moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said there must be a "significant nexus" between the wetland and a navigable waterway.
Virtually any land in America would be covered under the government's interpretation of the law, Roberts and the court's other three conservatives complained in an opinion.
The court's four liberal members said the conservatives would have opened up sensitive wetlands to polluters.
A contentious ruling
It was a dramatic conclusion to a pair of property rights cases the justices agreed to review last fall, just days after Roberts joined the court. The Bush administration defended the law and had urged the court to stay out of the case.
The justices were so splintered that there were five separate opinions covering 100 pages.
The key decision was by Kennedy, who agreed with the liberal members that federal regulations can apply to land adjacent to tributaries, including tributaries that are not filled with water all year.
Kennedy, however, joined conservatives in ruling that regulators may have misinterpreted the Clean Water Act when they refused to let two Michigan property owners build a shopping mall and condominiums on wetlands they own.
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