dissenting:
I agree that this is not the typical Clean Water Act prosecution — though, as criminal prosecutions under the Act are infrequent, or at least result in few published judicial opinions, what is “typical” is as yet ill-defined. I also agree that the prosecutors in this case may not have defined the theory of their case before proceeding to trial as well as they might have, thereby complicating the task of determining whether the jury was asked to resolve the proper factual questions. However, because I do not agree that a person can never be a point source, and because I believe that Mr. Villegas’ actions, as the jury found them, fell well within the bounds of activity proscribed by the Clean Water Act’s bar on discharge of pollutants into navigable waters, I am required to dissent.
Point source.
I begin with the proposition that the Clean Water Act bars “the discharge of any pollutant by any person,” except as authorized elsewhere in the Act. 33 U.S.C. § 1311(a) (1988). The only limiting factors are definitional: the Act bars “discharges” from “point sources” of “pollutants” to “navigable waters.” 1 It does not bar nonpoint source pollution, pollution of dry land or nonnavigable waters, or the movement of existing pollution within the navigable waters.
The key in this case is the definition of a point source. The term is introduced as part of the definition of “discharge of a pollutant”: “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” 33 U.S.C. § 1362(12)(A) (1988). The term “point source,” in turn, is defined as
any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, including but not limited to any pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel or other floating craft, from which pollutants are or may be discharged. This term does not include agricultural storm-water discharges and return flows from irrigated agriculture.
33 U.S.C. § 1362(14) (1988) (emphasis added).
The language of this definition indicates that it encompasses a wide range of means of placing pollutants into navigable waters. The question before us is what, in addition to the listed examples, is a “discernible, confined and discrete conveyance.”
*651I begin with the obvious, in hopes that it will illuminate the less obvious: the classic point source is something like a pipe. This is, at least in part, because pipes and similar conduits are needed to carry large quantities of waste water, which represents a large proportion of the point source pollution problem. Thus, devices designed to convey large quantities of waste water from a factory or municipal sewage treatment facility are readily classified as point sources. Because not all pollutants are liquids, however, the statute and the eases make clear that means of conveying solid wastes to be dumped in navigable waters are also point sources. See, e.g., 33 U.S.C. § 1362(14) (“rolling stock,” or railroad cars, listed as an example of a point source); Avoyelles Sportsmen’s League, Inc. v. Marsh, 715 F.2d 897, 922 (5th Cir.1983) (backhoes and bulldozers used to gather fill and deposit it on wetlands are point sources).
What I take from this look at classic point sources is that, at the least, an organized means of channeling and conveying industrial waste in quantity to navigable waters is a “discernible, confined and discrete conveyance.” The case law is in accord: courts have deemed a broad range of means of depositing pollutants in the country’s navigable waters to be point sources. See, e.g., Rybachek v. ERA, 904 F.2d 1276 (9th Cir.1990) (placer mining; sluice box from which discharge water is redeposited in stream is point source, despite provisions protecting some mining activities); United States v. M.C.C. of Fla., Inc., 772 F.2d 1501, 1505-06 (11th Cir.1985) (tugs redepositing dirt from bottom of water body onto beds of water grass are point sources discharging the dirt), vacated on other grounds, 481 U.S. 1034, 107 S.Ct. 1968, 95 L.Ed.2d 809 (1987) (defendants’ right to jury trial); Sierra Club v. Abston Constr. Co., 620 F.2d 41, 45 (5th Cir.1980) (spill of contaminated runoff from strip mine, if collected or channeled by the operator, is point source discharge); United States v. Earth Sciences, Inc., 599 F.2d 368, 374 (10th Cir.1979) (same); Appalachian Power Co. v. Train, 545 F.2d 1351, 1372 (4th Cir.1976) (same); O’Leary v. Moyer’s Landfill, Inc., 523 F.Supp. 642, 655 (E.D.Pa.1981) (same). Nor have courts been inclined to exclude mining or agricultural point sources, despite the fact that portions of the Clean Water Act protect these industries to some extent. See Rybachek, 904 F.2d 1276; Consolidation Coal Co. v. Costle, 604 F.2d 239, 251 (4th Cir.1979) (EPA has no discretion to exempt mining point sources from regulation), rev’d in part on other grounds sub nom. National Crushed Stone Ass’n, 449 U.S. 64, 101 S.Ct. 295, 66 L.Ed.2d 268 (1980); United States v. Frezzo Bros., Inc., 546 F.Supp. 713, 718 (E.D.Pa.1982) (mushroom composting is not agriculture, so exception for agricultural point sources not applicable to pipe carrying stormwater runoff), aff'd, 703 F.2d 62 (3d Cir.) (per curiam), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 829, 104 S.Ct. 106, 78 L.Ed.2d 109 (1983).
Further, the legislative history indicates that the Act was meant to control periodic, as well as continuous, discharges. S.Rep. No. 92-414, 92d Cong. 1st Sess. (1971), reprinted at 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3668, 3705.
In short, the term “point source” has been broadly construed to apply to a wide range of polluting techniques, so long as the pollutants involved are not just humanmade, but reach the navigable waters by human effort or by leaking from a clear point at which waste water was collected by human effort. From these cases, the writers of one respected treatise have concluded that such a “man-induced gathering mechanism plainly is the essential characteristic of a point source” and that a point source, “[p]ut simply, ... is an identifiable conveyance of pollutants.” 5 Robert E. Beck, Waters & Water Rights § 53.01(b)(3) at 216-17 (1991), citing Sierra Club v. Abston Constr. Co., 620 F.2d at 45 (miners channeled waters into sump pits which leaked after heavy rains); Earth Sciences, 599 F.2d at 373; and Avoyelles Sportsmen’s League, 473 F.Supp. 525. See also Dague v. City of Burlington, 935 F.2d 1343, 1354-55 (2d Cir.1991) (term “point source” should be defined broadly to include culvert conveying landfill leachate, though the culvert itself did not “add” pollutants to the navigable waters, but conveyed them from one navigable body of water, into which the pollutants had leaked, to another), rev’d in part on other grounds, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 2638, 120 L.Ed.2d 449 (1992); Kenne-*652cott Copper Corp. v. EPA, 612 F.2d 1232, 1243 (10th Cir.1979) (noting that Congress defined “point source” broadly so that it would be applicable to thousands of contemplated point sources, not all of which could possibly be enumerated); Appalachian Power Co. v. Train, 545 F.2d 1351, 1373 (EPA may regulate channeled runoff, but not un-channeled runoff). In explaining why a broad definition was needed, the Kennecott Copper court, quoting American Petroleum Inst. v. EPA 540 F.2d 1023, 1032 (10th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 922, 97 S.Ct. 1340, 51 L.Ed.2d 601 (1977), noted that the statute sets as its goal the “attainment of the no discharge objective,” and that this objective could not be achieved if the term “point source” were read narrowly. 612 F.2d at 1243.
This broad reading of the term “point source” is essential to fulfill the mandate of the Clean Water Act, in that
[t]he touchstone of the regulatory scheme is that those needing to use the waters for waste distribution must seek and obtain a permit to discharge that waste, with the quantity and quality of the discharge regulated. The concept of a point source was designed to further this scheme by embracing the broadest possible definition of any identifiable conveyance from which pollutants might enter the waters of the United States.
We believe it contravenes the intent of FWPCA and the structure of the statute to exempt from regulation any activity that emits pollution from an identifiable point.
Earth Sciences, 599 F.2d 368, 373.
Nonetheless, the term “point source” sets significant definitional limits on the reach of the Clean Water Act. Fifty percent or more of all water pollution is thought to come from nonpoint sources. S.Rep. 99-50, 99th Cong., 1st Sess. 8 (1985); William F. Pedersen, Jr., Turning the Tide on Water Quality, 15 Ecol. L.Q. 69, n. 10 (1988). So, to further refine the definition of “point source,” I consider what it is that the Act does not cover: non-point source discharges.2
Nonpoint source pollution is, generally, runoff: salt from roads, agricultural chemicals from farmlands, oil from parking lots, and other substances washed by rain, in diffuse patterns, over the land and into navigable waters.3 The sources are many, difficult to identify and difficult to control. Indeed, an effort to greatly reduce nonpoint source pollution could require radical changes in land use patterns which Congress evidently was unwilling to mandate without further *653study.4 The structure of the statute — which regulates point source pollution closely, while leaving nonpoint source regulation to the states under the Section 208 program — indicates that the term “point source” was included in the definition of discharge so as to ensure that nonpoint source pollution would not be covered. Instead, Congress chose to regulate first that which could easily be regulated: direct discharges by identifiable parties, or point sources.
This rationale for regulating point and nonpoint sources differently — that point sources may readily be controlled and are easily attributable to a particular source, while nonpoint sources are more difficult to control without radical change, and less easily attributable, once they reach water, to any particular’ responsible party — helps define what fits within each category. Thus, Professor Rodgers has suggested, “[t]he statutory ‘discernible, confined and discrete conveyance’ ... can be understood as singling out those candidates suitable for control-at-the-source.” 2 William H. Rodgers, Jr., Environmental Law: Air and Water § 4.10 at 150 (1986). And, as Professor Rodgers notes, “[c]ase law confirms the controllability theory, adding to it a responsibility component, so that ‘point sources’ are understood both as sources that can be cleaned up and as sources where fairness suggests the named parties should do the cleaning.” Id. And see, e.g., National Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. EPA, 915 F.2d 1314, 1316 (9th Cir.1990) (“The Act focused on point source polluters presumably because they could be identified and regulated more easily than nonpoint source polluters.”); Earth Sciences, 599 F.2d at 371 (“[b]eeause nonpoint sources of pollution ... are virtually impossible to isolate to one polluter, no permit or regulatory system was established as to them”); National Water Commission, Water Policies for the Future: Final Report to the President and to the Congress of the United States 64 (1973).
While Villegas’ activities were not prototypical point source discharges — in part because he was disposing of waste that could have been disposed of on land, and so did not need a permit or a pipe — they much more closely resembled a point source discharge than a nonpoint source discharge. First, Vil-legas and his lab were perfectly capable of avoiding discharging their waste into water: they were, in Professor Rodgers’ terms, a “controllable” source.
Furthermore, the discharge was directly into water, and came from an identifiable point, Villegas. Villegas did not dispose of the materials on land, where they could be washed into water as nonpoint source pollution. Rather, he carried them, from his firm’s laboratory, in his car, to his apartment complex, where he placed them in a bulkhead below the high tide line. I do not think it is necessary to determine whether it was Mr. Villegas himself who was the point source, or whether it was his car, the vials, or the bulkhead: in a sense, the entire stream of Mr. Villegas’ activity functioned as a “discrete conveyance” or point source. The point is that the source of the pollution was clear, and would have been easy to control. Indeed, Villegas was well aware that there were methods of controlling the discharge (and that the materials were too dangerous for casual disposal): his laboratory had hired a professional medical waste handler. He simply chose not to use an appropriate waste disposal mechanism.
Villegas’ method may have been an unusual one for a corporate officer, but it would undermine the statute — which, after all, sets as its goal the elimination of discharges, 33 U.S.C. § 1311(a) — to regard as “ambiguous” a Congressional failure to list an unusual *654method of disposing of waste.5 I doubt that Congress would have regarded an army of men and women throwing industrial waste from trucks into a stream as exempt from the statute. Since the Act contains no exemption for de minimus violations — since, indeed, many Clean Water Act prosecutions are for a series of small discharges, each of which is treated as a single violation — I cannot see that one man throwing one day’s worth of medical waste into the ocean differs (and indeed, with this type of pollution, it might be that only a few days’ violations could be proven even if the laboratory regularly relied on Villegas to dispose of its waste by throwing it into the ocean). A different reading would encourage corporations perfectly capable of abiding by the Clean Water Act’s requirements to ask their employees to stand between the company trucks and the sea, thereby transforming point source pollution (dumping from trucks) into nonpoint source pollution (dumping by hand). Such a method is controllable, easily identifiable, and inexcusable. To call it nonpoint source pollution is to read a technical exception into a statute which attempts to define in broad terms an activity which may be conducted in many different ways.
Having explained my own view of what a “point source” is, and why Villegas, or his activities in carrying waste from his lab to the ocean, was a point source, I will attempt to confront the majority’s counterarguments. My colleagues suggest that a person can never be a point source, relying heavily on the supposed redundancy produced when the Act’s language barring the “discharge of any pollutant by any person” is read with the definitional terms placed in terms of the linguistic variables, as follows: “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from a person by a person.” Granted, this sounds odd. But I believe the oddity is an artifact of assuming that the term “person” means the same thing in both parts of the sentence, and that in both cases it means what it means in everyday language.
The apparent oddness disappears when one grasps that the first teim “person” in the peculiar sentence means “a person acting as a point source”6 and that the second term “person” has been defined, typically for statutes imposing responsibility on a variety of parties, but not typically for ordinary speech, as a responsible party. As the linguistic hint “any” before both “person” and “point source” suggests, the terms are to be construed broadly. Thus, for example, one could fill in the linguistic variables as follows: the Act bars the addition of any pollutant to navigable waters by an employee’s throwing them there (a person acting as a point source) at the instruction of his or her employer (a corporation, or person capable of being held responsible) and in particular of his or her supervisor (also a person capable of being held responsible). More specifically, the sentence could refer to an individual hired to convey, by hand, all of a corporation’s toxic wastes from the company’s back door to the Mississippi River, three feet away (the point source), by that individual and by the corporation which authorized the disposal (the potential defendants). I do not think technical arguments about whether the *655toxic substances were in discrete containers are fruitful when the activity is discrete, conveys pollutants, and is confined to a clear, traceable single source. When a company chooses to use the nation’s waters as a dump-site for waste it has created and gathered in a manageable place,7 it should ask for a permit or face prosecution.
I am of course given pause, however, by the nature of the criminal sanctions attached to point source discharges under § 1319. Given the broad statutory definitions of pollutant and point source, it would appear that a knowing violation would include intentionally throwing a candy wrapper into the ocean — -and that this is an activity which could subject the thrower to a $25,000 fine and three years in jail. It seems improbable to me that this could have been Congress’ intent. Consequently, I would with the majority read the statute as ambiguous as it pertains to individual litterers, as opposed to disposers of industrial and municipal waste.8 The latter were the principal targets of the authors of the CWA, and, as professional creators of waste,, charged with knowledge that disposal of waste into navigable waters is a crime. Cf. United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U.S. 277, 64 S.Ct. 134, 88 L.Ed. 48 (1943) (Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires corporate officers standing in a responsible relationship to the public interest to ensure that products are safe, subject to criminal liability).
Furthermore, no factual dispute essential to finding Villegas’ activities to have been a point source discharge remains. The jury concluded that Villegas did in fact place pollutants — the materials he brought from the laboratory — into navigable waters; the only question for us is whether this activity is point source pollution. Cf. United States v. Law, 979 F.2d 977, 979 (4th Cir.1992) (misdefinition of point source in criminal case harmless, where action, if it occurred at all, was point source discharge), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1844, 123 L.Ed.2d 468 (1993). Thus, I do not believe that the difficulty the prosecutors had here in defining Villegas’ offense resulted in their failing to prove that Villegas violated the law.
Rule of Lenity.
My colleagues also suggest that the statute is sufficiently ambiguous that the rule of lenity requires resolving the ambiguity in Villegas’ favor. However, as I have indicated, I do not think the Clean Water Act is ambiguous with respect to an individual physically disposing of medical wastes, in quantity, directly into navigable waters, by means of a controllable, discrete conveyance and course of action. As the Supreme Court has noted,
[bjecause the meaning of language is inherently contextual, we have declined to deem a statute ‘ambiguous’ for purposes of lenity merely because it was possible to articulate a construction more narrow than that urged by the Government. Nor have we deemed a division of judicial authority automatically sufficient to trigger lenity. If that were sufficient, one court’s unduly narrow reading of a criminal statute would become binding on all other courts.... *656Instead we have always reserved lenity for those situations in which a reasonable doubt persists about a statute’s intended scope even after resort to “the language and structure, legislative history, and motivating policies” of the statute.
Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 108, 111 S.Ct. 461, 465, 112 L.Ed.2d 449 (1990), quoting Bifulco v. United States, 447 U.S. 381, 387, 100 S.Ct. 2247, 2252, 65 L.Ed.2d 205 (1980) (citations omitted). See also United States v. Concepcion, 983 F.2d 369, 379 (1993) (rule of lenity applies only if statute is ambiguous, “giving [the words of the statute] their fair meaning in accordance with the intentions manifested by Congress,”) (citing Bifulco, 447 U.S. at 387, 100 S.Ct. at 2252) rather than “ ‘at the beginning as an overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers’ ” (quoting United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 587 n. 10, 101 S.Ct. 2524, 2531 n. 10, 69 L.Ed.2d 246 in turn quoting Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 596, 81 S.Ct. 321, 326, 5 L.Ed.2d 312 (1961)).
Having resorted to the language and structure, legislative history and motivating policies of the Clean Water Act, I think it plain enough that Congress intended the statute to bar corporate" officers from disposing of corporate waste into navigable waters by hand as well as by pipe. Further, I would note that this is not the sort of activity that Ville-gas could honestly have believed violated no statute, whether promulgated by federal, state, or local authorities. Thus, this is not a case in which the defendant had no fair warning that his actions were illegal. No compliance attorney here could have struggled with the difficulty of deciding whether this was activity for which a permit should be sought, as might be the case in a factory dealing with runoff that arguably was channeled and thereby transformed from non-point to point source pollution; rather, an attorney asked to advise Villegas whether his activity was permissible might say that there was as yet no ease law indicating that such activity was point source pollution under the Clean Water Act, but that such a view was certainly consistent with the Act and that the behavior would almost certainly be proscribed by that Act or some other.
Knowing Endangemient.
I concur in the majority’s ruling on the knowing endangerment counts, though for a different reason. I think the trial court was correct in concluding that the government failed, as a matter of law, to establish “imminent danger,” since its own experts agreed that the risk that someone would be harmed by the hepatitis-infected blood in some of the vials, while serious, was quite low.
CONCLUSION
Accordingly, I would affirm the rulings of the district court.
. This list is not exclusive. The terms listed are defined at 33 U.S.C. § 1362(12), (14), (6) and (7) (1988), respectively.
. The cases and commentators all seem to assume that all water pollution is either point source pollution or nonpoint source pollution. See, e.g., Oregon Natural Resources Council v. United States Forest Service, 834 F.2d 842, 849 (9th Cir.1987); Friends of the Sakonnet v. Dutra, 738 F.Supp. 623, 630 and n. 11 (D.R.I.1990); Zygmunt J.B. Plater, et al., Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law and Society 830 (1992); Frederick R. Anderson, Daniel R. Mandelker, and A. Dan Tarlock, Environmental Protection: Law and Policy 377 (2d ed. 1990); 2 William H. Rodgers, Jr., Environmental Law: Air and Water § 4.9 at 125-26 and § 4.10 at 146 (but noting that distinguishing point sources from nonpoint sources can be difficult, and listing as an example of a difficult question “the fellow in the truck at the edge of the stream,” id. at 126) (1986); Frank P. Grad, Treatise on Environmental Law 3.03[4][n] 3-215 n. 366.6 (7/92) (looseleaf); Esther Bartfeld, Point-Nonpoint Source Trading: Looking Beyond Potential Cost Savings, 23 Envtl. Law 43, 45, 45 n. 6, 47 (1993); John H. Davidson, Commentary: Using Special Water Districts to Control Nonpoint Source of Water Pollution, 22 Land Use & Envtl.L.Rev. 515, 516 (1991); Robert D. Fentress, Comment: Nonpoint Source Pollution, Groundwater, and the 1987 Water Quality Act: Section 208 Revisited?, 19 Envtl.L. 807, 811 n. 16 (1989); Richard J. Lazarus, Comment: Nonpoint Source Pollution, 2 Harv.Envtl.L.Rev. 176, 176-77, 177 n. 2 (1977).
. According to the EPA, nonpoint source pollution
is caused by diffuse sources that are not regulated as point sources and normally is associated with agricultural, silvicultural and urban runoff, runoff from construction activities, etc. Such pollution results in the human-made or human-induced alteration of the chemical, physical, biological, and radiological integrity of water. In practical terms, nonpoint source pollution does not result from a discharge at a specific, single location (such as a single pipe) but generally results from land runoff, precipitation, atmospheric deposition, or percolation.
EPA Office Of Water, Office of Water Regulations and Standards, Nonpoint Source Guidance 3 (1987).
. As Professors Anderson, Mandelker, and Tar-lock have observed,
Congress expressed great faith in the ability of engineers to limit what came out of pipes but less faith in the ability of engineers to fix non-point source pollution:
There is no effective way as yet, other than land use control, by which you can intercept that runoff and control it in the way that you do a point source. We have not yet developed technology to deal with that kind of a problem.
... [Senate Debate on S. 2770, Nov. 2, 1971, reported in 1972 Legislative History, at 1315.]
Frederick R. Anderson, Daniel R. Mandelker, and A. Dan Tarlock, Environmental Protection: Law and Policy 377 (2d ed. 1990).
. I recognize the dangers of "pa[ying] too much attention to the broad stated purposes of the [Clean Water] Act.” National Wildlife Fed'n v. Gorsuch, 693 F.2d 156, 171 (D.C.Cir.1982) (reversing district court ruling that EPA decision not to regulate dams as point sources was improper in light of these broad goals, and holding that the EPA could reasonably conclude that dams were not covered, at least where they do not "add” ordinary "pollutants,” but either move already polluted water from one side of the dam to the other or change water "conditions” such as heat, dissolved oxygen content, and saturation levels).
However, there are also dangers to paying too little attention to such broad stated goals. While the Clean Water Act may not always live up to its grand ambitions, in particular by setting definitional limits on what it covers (only pollution, only point sources), its ambitious goals are nonetheless useful interpretive guides: they indicate that, all other things being equal, a generous rather than a cramped interpretation of the statute is more likely to be what Congress intended.
. In my view, persons can be both point and nonpoint sources of pollution. They may be point sources when they deposit waste directly into water; they may be nonpoint sources when they, for example, spread fertilizer on the ground or deposit oil in a driveway, leaving it to be washed into nearby rivers. Thus, to say that the Clean Water Act bars persons polluting, rather than point sources polluting, would be too broad.
. I mean to distinguish a company whose agricultural or other activity leaves pollutants dispersed on the land, which may then find their way into the nation’s waters.
. An alternative — that the Act applies only to major discharges — seems to me both administratively unworkable (where does one draw the line?) and inconsistent with the statute and case law. The statutory definition of "discharge” refers to "any” addition of "any” pollutant from "any” point source, indicating a congressional intent to bar all, even minor, violations. Further, the D.C.Circuit has held that EPA has no discretion to limit regulation of point sources to those it deems most significant. National Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Costle, 568 F.2d 1369, 1374 (D.C.Cir.1977). This, too, indicates that small as well as large point sources are governed by the Act. Finally, I would note that within the statute's definitional limits, it takes on an absolutist tone. The statute’s stated goals, ”restor[ing] and maintaining] the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters,” 33 U.S.C. § 1251(a) (1988), suggest that eliminating, not reducing, pollution is the aim. Thus, while the Act exempts certain types of pollution — nonpoint source and agricultural return flows — for policy reasons seen as trumping, at least temporarily, the goal of zero pollution, it takes a categorical approach to point source pollution. As the Costle case suggests, neither agencies nor courts should rewrite the statute to be more "reasonable” — less protective of our nation's waters and more indulgent of polluters— than Congress intended.