Brewers warn Supreme Court: Back the Clean Water Act, or beer will taste like medicine

Photo: Geoff Bado and Lori White at their brewery, Zed’s Beer, in October of 2019.

MARLTON, N.J. — Like craft breweries around the country, Lori White’s business is all about being local. But an upcoming Supreme Court case over water pollution in Maui has shifted her focus about 5,000 miles west.

The case, to be argued early next month, was brought by environmentalists who are opposed to what they see as the Trump administration attempting to defang the nation’s clean water regulations and reverse decades of precedent.

On its face, the case has nothing to do with beer. But a decision could have substantial consequences for the power of the Clean Water Act, a landmark federal law signed in 1972 that has scrubbed the nation’s waterways of pollution.

“Our industry is so focused on local, local, local,” White said recently from the taproom of Zed’s Beer, the business she co-founded in 2015. “But really, we are part of the bigger dynamic. It does impact us. What they decide to do impacts all of us.”

White and her business partner, Geoff Bado, are among the signers of a friend-of-the-court brief submitted to the justices over the summer […]

Full article: Brewers warn Supreme Court: Back the Clean Water Act, or beer will taste like medicine