A California appellate court affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision approving an agreement between landowners, the Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District, and local cities and water companies in a water rights dispute over the groundwater contained in the Santa Maria Va...
South Carolina's highest court held that the state's environmental agency violated state law when it negotiated an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Georgia Ports Authority before issuing a CWA §401 water quality certificate for a proposed expansion project for Savannah Harbor...
A Texas appellate court held that sovereign immunity bars an individual's lawsuit against the board members of a local reclamation district claiming that their activities caused a lake to be substantially drained during 2008 and for most of the years 2009 through 2011. As a governmental agency and p...
A California appellate court held that a water control board order that regulates waste from existing milk cow dairies violates the state's antidegradation policy. The order prohibits the further degradation of groundwater, as is required by the state’s antidegradation policy, but it does not proh...
A California appellate court upheld a local water board's $250,000 administrative civil liability order issued against a developer for CWA permit violations. The board issued the order after concluding that the developer discharged sediment-laden waters into ephemeral drainages adjacent to a constru...
The Eleventh Circuit held it lacked jurisdiction over several petitions for review of an EPA decision that allows a water district to transfer water from the polluted canals of the Everglades Agricultural Area into Lake Okeechobee without a CWA discharge permit. CWA §509(b)(1)(E) grants original ju...
The U.S. Supreme Court vacates and remands for further proceeding two Sixth Circuit opinions holding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) had jurisdiction over state wetlands adjacent to a tributary of traditional navigable waters but separated by a berm, and wetlands lying near ditches...
A district court dismissed environmental groups' CWA suit against a coal mine for new source performance standard violations. Because the groups filed suit just 11 days after sending the mine its notice of violation, the mine claimed that the groups failed to comply with the 60-day notice requiremen...
A district court upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to issue a CWA §404 permit to a mining company for the construction of a valley fill and sediment pond in conjunction with the Reylas Surface Mine in West Virginia. The Corps' adoption of a compensatory mitigation plan that will rep...
The Supreme Court of Hawaii vacated and remanded the interim instream flow standards set by Hawaii's Commission on Water Resource Management for the Waihe'e River and the Waiehu, 'Iao, and Waikapu streams, collectively referred to as Na Wai 'Eha, or "the four great waters of Maui." In considering th...