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How far is "neighboring", they're 300 feet away from the lake.
This case is weird because the objectionable part doesn't seem to be the idea that the ditch on their land has some relation to the water quality of the lake, but the treatment of gravel and sand as pollutants. If they had been dumping highly toxic waste on marshy land next to a ditch that flowed into Priest Lake we wouldn't care whether it's technically adjacent or not, we'd understand that some amount of the water-soluble pollutants are going to make it into the lake. The maddening part is treating construction sand like toxic waste.
Having had to secure an erosion and sedimentation permit, there's good reason for treating sand and gravel as waste. It may not kill fish the way a more traditional toxin will, but it can seriously gum up an ecosystem enough to have the same effect on the health of a stream or lake. There is a whole host of Federal regulations concerning how much fill you can dump into a lake.
Right, but nobody was planning to dump fill in the lake as a part of this homebuilding process I shouldn't think?
If the Sacketts were to dump a bunch of diesel on their property, it's plausible that this could pollute the lake -- but sand and gravel to not travel in the water table this way, and should be regulated separately if the EPA is going to take an expansive enough definition of "waterway" to cover groundwater pollution.
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There's a lot of good policy arguments in favor of more specific and expansive regulations for more specifically dangerous materials. There are even good policy arguments in favor of regulating large changes to water runoff, including those done by the safest construction sand and gravel -- you can fuck up a lot of ecology with a giant dam, after all, and even without a basement the typical house is a large dam.
Some of these regulations exist, either at the federal level in other laws, or in some or all states. But it is easier to redefine things.
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