The court denies most of oil companies' motions to dismiss in a class action suit brought by individual well owners claiming that the companies knowingly caused methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) contamination of their groundwater. The court first holds that the claims of several of the class partic...

The court affirms the dismissal of a domestic utility company's allegation that the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT) unconstitutionally imposed monetary assessments on domestic utilities for the remediation of environmentally contaminated U.S. uranium processing facilities. Beginning in the 1960s, ...

The court denies a petition for review seeking reversal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator's decision not to object to a state agency's determination that the heightened permitting requirements of the prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) program do not apply to ...

The court vacates a district court decision that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated its statutory obligations under the Radon Gas and Indoor Air Quality Act (Radon Act) by issuing a report that analyzed the effects of secondhand smoke on human health and categorized secondhand s...

The court affirms a district court holding that the Clean Air Act (CAA) does not preempt California's ban of the use of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) in oxygenated fuel. CAA §211(c)(4)(A) preempts state regulation of fuel for purposes of motor vehicle emissions, but California is exempt fr...

The court held that a 2002 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule specifying that Nevada was divided into more than 250 baseline areas for the Clean Air Act (CAA) prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) program was not arbitrary or capricious. Based on an ambiguous 1991 EPA regulation...

The court affirms a district court decision that New York Air Pollution Mitigation Law §66-k is preempted by the Clean Air Act (CAA) Title IV cap-and-trade system and violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Section 66-k requires the assessment of an air pollution mitigation offs...

The court holds that an electric utility violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) when it completed 11 construction activities that modified a coal-fired electric-generating facility without first calculating post-construction emissions and obtaining preconstruction CAA prevention of significant deteriorati...

The court holds that it lacked jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) decision denying environmental groups' request that the licensing of two nuclear power plants in New York be conditioned on several safety-related changes in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist att...

The court holds that a local transportation control measure, adopted as part of California's state implementation plan to attain federal air quality standards in the San Francisco Bay Area, does not impose an enforceable obligation on the local transportation commission to increase public transit ri...