The D.C. Circuit upheld the dismissal of a Native American tribe's case against DOE asking it to clean up two contaminated sites under the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation and Control Act (UMTRCA). The sites, located on Navajo tribal land, were contaminated by Word War II and Cold War era u...

The Third Circuit dismissed a petition for review of an EPA letter opining that facilities operated by a landfill and a neighboring energy company were under common control for purposes of air emissions permitting. The landfill owner challenged EPA's determination under CAA §307(b)(1), whic...

The Ninth Circuit amended dicta set forth in its prior opinion at 40 ELR 20233, which held that property owners and three employees of the California Department of Fish and Game did not violate the ESA when they dug up and removed Sebastopol meadowfoam—an endangered plant species—from privately ...

The Federal Claims court ordered DOE to pay three utility companies $10,632,454.83 for failing to collect spent nuclear fuel from the Wolf Creek Generating Station in Kansas in violation of their contract. The utilities' damages derive from their investigation of alternative spent nuclear fu...

A district court held that CERCLA's statute of limitations does not bar the United States from recovering certain costs it incurred in 1993 and 1995 responding to soil and ground water contamination at the Fletcher Paint Works and Storage Facility Superfund site in Milford, New Hampshire. Af...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...

The Ninth Circuit held that the CAA does not preempt a California air pollution district rule requiring development sites to reduce the amount of pollutants they emit. CAA §209(e)(1) only preempts those standards or requirements relating to the control of emissions from "new" construction e...

The Fifth Circuit held that an energy company's current and ongoing construction of a coal-fired power plant, for which no maximum achievable control technology (MACT) determination has ever been made, violates CAA §112(g). In ordinary circumstances, there would be no question as to whether...

A district court dismissed a motion to dismiss environmental groups' citizen suit against five coal companies alleging thousands of violations of the CWA and SMCRA in West Virginia. Because EPA entered into a consent decree with the companies, the defendants argued that the groups' CWA claim...

A district court granted in part and denied in part cross-motions for summary judgment on claims that the U.S. Army failed to comply with two settlement agreements requiring it to conduct and complete subsurface archaeological surveys of its munitions training grounds on the Makua Military R...