On Monday, the first day of its new term, the Supreme Court is hearing a big environmental case. It involves a couple who tried to fill in wetlands on their property to build a house until the Environmental Protection Agency said stop.

The court’s ruling could have significant repercussions on how the government regulates wetlands and handles attempts to develop them. The wetlands at issue in the Supreme Court case are near Priest Lake, a remote spot in northern Idaho.

“This case implicates millions of acres of wetlands throughout the entire country,” said Camille Pannu, associate professor at Columbia Law School. “So it’s a really critical case in terms of how we protect wetlands and also the role that wetlands play when we think about protecting our freshwater sources.”

Here & Now‘s Celeste Headlee speaks with Dr. Bob Bond, who has been coming to the lake since 1939 shortly after he was born. He’s now 83. His Dad built a cabin there, not on wetlands, where Bond and his wife live for part of the year.