A district court granted a motion to transfer the West Virginia environmental agency's action against EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers challenging their permitting processes for coal mining to the D.C. District Court for consolidation with another case filed by a mining industry trad...

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...

The Ninth Circuit held that EPA’s decision to transfer authority over portions of the NPDES program to the state of Alaska was not arbitrary or capricious. Petitioners argued that EPA did not adequately ensure that Alaska state law will provide the same opportunities for judicial review of permitt...

The Ninth Circuit, in an amended opinion, held that stormwater runoff from logging roads that is collected by and then discharged from a system of ditches, culverts, and channels is a point source discharge for which an NPDES permit is required. Accordingly, the court reversed a lower court dec...

A district court held that environmental groups may go forward with their claims that coal-contaminated dust, slurry, water, and snow is being discharged from a coal loading facility into a bay in violation of the CWA. Although the facility has an NPDES permit, the groups argued that the per...

The Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision upholding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' conclusion that it had jurisdiction over wetlands on a developer's property. The Corps permissibly defined the scope of its review area as including 448 acres of similarly situated wetlands. B...

The D.C. Circuit denied a power company's petition for review of a FERC order that North Carolina did not waive its CWA certification authority necessary for the relicensing of the company's hydroelectric facilities. One of the preconditions of relicensing is receipt of a state certification th...

The Ninth Circuit held that BLM and the U.S. Forest Service did not violate the CWA, NEPA, or the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) in approving a proposed mine expansion project in the Caribou National Forest. After evaluating the data, the agencies determined that remediation efforts w...

The Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded a district court's imposition of penalties against the former owner of a metals smelting facility for CWA violations. The environmental groups that filed suit against the company had standing, as they demonstrated that one of their members used an are...

A district court granted the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's (MassDOT's) motion for judgment in a case involving its violation of municipal separate storm sewer system NPDES permits in the Boston area and denied an environmental group's motion for additional injunctive relief. Once a co...