On July 29th, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by environmental groups for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act resulting from the alleged illegal filling of wetlands on Georgia’s coast. This case is notable because it is the first time the Eleventh Circuit has applied Sackett v. EPA—a May 2023 Supreme Court decision that clarified the scope of federal jurisdiction over various water bodies, including wetlands.
In Glynn Env't Coal., Inc. v. Sea Island Acquisition, LLC, No. CV 219-050, 2024 WL 1088585 (S.D. Ga. Mar. 1, 2024), aff'd, No. 24-10710, 2025 WL 2112517 (11th Cir. July 29, 2025), the plaintiffs sued Sea Island Acquisition, LLC, which owns and operates resort facilities, for alleged Clean Water Act violations arising from the fill of less than half an acre of wetlands on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint, finding that the facts alleged by the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the test articulated by the Supreme Court in Sackett to determine when a wetland is subject to federal jurisdiction. Particularly, the plaintiffs failed to allege facts indicating that the wetland at issue is adjacent to a traditional navigable water and “has such a continuous surface connection” to the traditional navigable water “that it is ‘indistinguishable’ from it.” The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the district court and affirmed the dismissal.
With respect to plaintiffs’ allegations in the complaint, the district court concluded that an allegation that a wetland is a “water of the United States” is a legal conclusion, not a factual allegation, and must be disregarded at the motion to dismiss stage. The district court also found that allegations made by plaintiffs that the wetland was located in the same basin as a traditional navigable water, that water from the wetland will eventually reach a traditional navigable water by “surface runoff and groundwater,” and an expert statement that the wetland is directly connected “via culverts and pipes” to a salt marsh that is adjacent to a water of the United States are all insufficient to establish that a wetland is subject to federal regulation under Sackett.
Moving forward, plaintiffs bringing Clean Water Act citizen suits for the unauthorized filling of wetlands must comply with the pleading standard articulated by the Eleventh Circuit in this case: “to establish that a wetland is sufficiently indistinguishable from a neighboring water of the United States, the [plaintiffs] must allege first, that the adjacent water body constitutes waters of the United States and second, that the wetland has a continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.” The Eleventh Circuit’s decision reinforces the Supreme Court’s holding from Sackett that, for a wetland to be subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, it must have a continuous surface connection with an otherwise jurisdictional water and that this connection must be one where it is difficult to distinguish between the end of the jurisdictional water and beginning of the wetland.
