A district court denied a manufacturing company's motion to dismiss a CWA lawsuit alleging that the company improperly stored and disposed of industrial waste at its sheet metal manufacturing facility. The company argued that an environmental group did not have standing to sue because it failed to n...
The Second Circuit vacated a decision by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denying a state water quality certification for construction of a natural gas pipeline through northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York. The pipeline company argued that the Department's denial...
The D.C. Circuit vacated a FERC decision concerning a licensee's decommissioning plan with reviewing states for hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River. A Native American tribe challenged FERC's determination that California and Oregon had not waived their water quality certification authority un...
A district court dismissed a Native American tribe's lawsuit challenging a proposed sulfide mine along the banks of the Menominee River, which forms the border between Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The tribe argued, pursuant to the Act's citizen suit provision, that EPA and the U.S. Army...
The Fourth Circuit vacated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' verification that construction of a natural gas pipeline could proceed in West Virginia under the terms and conditions of CWA Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12. Environmental groups argued that the Corps improperly incorporated the state's condit...
A district court vacated nationwide the Applicability Date Rule, which suspended the effect of the Clean Water Rule until February 2020 and required agencies in the interim to apply the pre-Clean Water Rule definition of "waters of the United States." Environmental groups argued that EPA and the U.S...
A district court dismissed a challenge to EPA's amendment to the 2015 Effluent Limitations Guidelines Rule, which established new limits and standards for various types of waste streams discharged by steam electric power plants. Environmental groups argued that the amendment violated the ESA and NEP...
A district court ordered EPA to issue a temperature total maximum daily load (TMDL) under the CWA for the Columbia and Snake Rivers, which are native habitat for endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead populations. An environmental group argued that the Agency failed to issue a TMDL for the r...
The Sixth Circuit held that seepage from a coal-fired power plant adjacent to the Cumberland River did not violate the CWA. Environmental groups argued that the plant violated the CWA by leaking pollutants without a permit from its unlined coal ash ponds into groundwater that is hydrologically conne...
The Sixth Circuit held that seepage from a coal-fired power plant that reached a nearby lake violated RCRA, but not the CWA. Environmental groups argued that the chemicals being stored in coal ash ponds contaminated the surrounding groundwater, which in turn contaminated a nearby lake, in violation ...