Maui community groups scored another win after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the County of Maui’s petition for the full court to rehear an appeals panel’s ruling earlier this year.

In February, the county lost its appeal to a 2014 Hawaii court ruling that it had been violating the U.S. Clean Water Act since the early 1980s, when its Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility was first put into operation, injecting 3 to 5 million gallons of treated sewage into groundwater each day.

“We’re pleased the Ninth Circuit rejected this attempt by polluting industries to do an end run around the Clean Water Act,” said Earthjustice staff attorney David Henkin in a news release. “When Congress passed this landmark law to protect our nation’s waters, it did not create a loophole for Maui County to pollute the Pacific Ocean by using the groundwater underneath the Lahaina facility as a sewer.”

Earthjustice, an environmental law organization, sued the county in 2012 on behalf of four Maui community groups, claiming this discharge into near-shore waters off Kahekili Beach was damaging coral reefs after an EPA-funded study used tracer dye to show the Lahaina sewage flows with the groundwater into those waters, linking it to algae blooms that smother the coral reefs.

Industry groups and 18 conservative state attorneys general had argued for the rehearing, said Earthjustice, making the court’s decision “an important affirmation of Clean Water Act protections across the nation.” None of the Ninth Circuit’s 25 active judges even asked for a vote on whether to reconsider the panel’s decision.

Earthjustice represented the Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club-Maui Group, Surfrider Foundation and West Maui Preservation Association.