Polluted water can flow from Bedford County to the ocean, who knew?

In U.S. v. Cooper, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the conviction of a Bedford County landowner from whose sewage lagoon at a trailer park he owned pollutants flowed into a creek which "a tributary of Sandy Creek, which is in turn a tributary of the Roanoke River. The Roanoke River flows from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, through North Carolina, and into the Albemarle Sound. There is no dispute that, as a tributary of an interstate water, the small creek into which the lagoon discharges constitutes a water of the United States."

The guy argued on appeal that the United States failed to prove that he knew all of that. The Fourth Circuit ruled that it didn't matter whether he knew it or not.

The defendant's name is D.J. Cooper, which is not to be confused with the mysterious hijacker, D.B. Cooper.