The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of an environmental group's CAA claim challenging an air quality district's method for offsetting emissions increases in its new source review permit program. The district's regulation, contained in the state's EPA-approved SIP, requires that most increase...
A district court granted in part and denied in part motions to dismiss a shipyard owner's CERCLA, RCRA, and tort law claims against the current owner of a steel mill. The court denied motions to dismiss the shipyard's CERCLA claims for contribution and response costs. The complaint contains factual ...
Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Governor’s Commission for Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal collaborated with the Congress for the New Urbanism to generate rebuilding proposals for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. One of the ideas to emerge from this partnership was the Katrina Cottage—a small home that could improve upon the FEMA trailer.
Black carbon, a component of soot and particulate matter, competes closely with methane as the largest anthropogenic contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. Regulation of black carbon has been identified as an affordable, politically feasible, fast-action means to mitigate the warming temperatures caused by climate change.
Environmental credit markets for mitigating impacts to wetlands, endangered species, water quality, and carbon emissions have been established throughout the United States. Recently, there has been much debate about whether a conservation project should be allowed to produce credits for multiple markets, a practice broadly referred to as credit stacking.
The D.C. Circuit dismissed petitions for review challenging DOE's attempt to withdraw its application to NRC for a license to construct a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as well as its apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste reposito...
Absent legislative intervention, CAA regulation of GHGs is moving beyond mobile sources to the industrial and power facilities that emit significant U.S. GHG emissions. The authors analyze the mechanisms available to EPA for regulating such sources, and identify one, NSPS, as the most predictable, likely, and practical, i.e., knowable, pathway. Indeed, EPA announced in late 2010 that it intends to pursue this pathway.
A California appellate court held that an insurance company has no duty to defend or indemnify a cosmetics company in an underlying action alleging that it violated Proposition 65, the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. The Proposition 65 claim being asserted against the compa...
A district court held that EPA need not issue endangerment findings under the CAA for marine vessels and nonroad vehicles and engines, but it denied the Agency's motion to dismiss environmental groups' request for an endangerment finding with respect to aircraft engines. EPA argued that the CAA prov...
This Article briefly describes a new basis for the objection that EPA has employed whereby operating permits can be delayed for significant periods of time without the expenditure of significant resources by EPA or environmental groups. In many cases, its use has shifted resource-intensive enforcement questions to the states.