The Seventh Circuit held that an insurance company has no duty to defend or indemnify a town in underlying lawsuits alleging that it knowingly supplied contaminated drinking water to its residents. In the mid-1908s, town officials learned that one of its water wells was contaminated with perc. B...

A district court held that EPA violated the CWA when it failed to review Oregon's nonpoint source rules. The nonpoint source provisions create exemptions for many sources of pollution in Oregon's waters, including agriculture, forestry, and grazing. EPA claimed that the regulations at issue were...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision granting summary judgment in favor of the U.S. government on claims challenging the DOI's accounting of approximately 9,000 acre feet of water released between June 17 and 24, 2004, from two reservoirs within California's Central Valley Project (...

A district court held that under a 1997 consent decree resolving CWA, RCRA, and state-law violations at a steel mill, the current owner is not liable for remediating any discharges that occurred prior to its purchase of the mill out of the previous owner's bankruptcy, but that it must conduct a site...

The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court decision dismissing breach of contract, takings, and Klamath River Basin Compact claims brought against the U.S. government by agricultural landowners and water, drainage, and irrigation districts in Oregon and California. The plaintiffs...

A district court held that BP and Anadarko Petroleum are responsible parties under OPA for pollution stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster and subject to civil penalties under the CWA, but that issues remain as to whether Transocean can be held liable under the CWA. BP and Anadarko co-owned...

The D.C. Circuit remanded a Minerals Management Service (MMS) order obligating an oil and gas company to plug permanently and to abandon its oil wells off the coast of California. The company argued that its contractual obligations under the lease, including any duties to plug and abandon the well, ...

The Fourth Circuit upheld an injunction requiring the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to obtain NPDES permits for reclamation efforts at abandoned coal mining sites. The text of the CWA, as well as corresponding EPA regulations, confirm that the permit requirements apply...

A district court held that North Carolina's general 10-year statute of repose does not bar a woman's lawsuit against the United States for injuries stemming from exposure to contaminated drinking water at a military base in North Carolina 20 years earlier. The North Carolina Legislature did not inte...

A district court upheld EPA's rule setting numeric nutrient criteria for Florida except in two respects: the stream criteria and the default downstream-protection criteria for unimpaired lakes. In 2009, recognizing that the state's narrative criterion was insufficient to control Florida's widesp...