The court holds that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which entered into two agreements with Canada regarding rights to excess water stored in reservoirs on the Columbia River system in Canada, did not violate the Northwest Power Act (NPA) or the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). T...
The court upholds the U.S. government's imposition, under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, of a special assessment on domestic utilities to help fund the cleanup of governmental facilities that provided uranium enrichment services to the assessed utilities. The court first holds that the provisions of...
The court holds that a uranium mining company must exhaust its jurisdiction-based appeals in the Navajo tribal court system before challenging in federal court the Navajo court's jurisdiction over nuclear torts. The court first holds that the Price-Anderson Act's jurisdictional provisions do not cre...
The Third Circuit denies an organization of manufacturers' and local governments' petition for review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) denial of Pennsylvania's request to redesignate the Pittsburgh-Beaver Valley area from nonattainment to attainment status for ozone under the Cl...
The court denies environmental groups' petitions to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) decision not to bring an enforcement action against a city for violating the terms of an operating license for a hydroelectric project on the Cowlitz River in Washington. In 1967, the city ...
The court holds that an electric utility company that was a 70% owner of a nuclear power plant in Iowa can deduct 15 years' worth of Energy Policy Act (EPACT) assessments in the tax year that the liability was determined. In 1992, Congress enacted the EPACT, which established a fund for the decontam...
A district court denied motions for summary judgment on states' claims that an electric utility modified one of its coal-fired power plants in violation of the prevention of signnificant deterioration (PSD) permitting requirements set forth in Clean Air Act §165(a). The court held that the rout...
A district court held that the Clean Air Act (CAA) does not preempt a local air district rule that requires developers to reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions from their projects or to pay a fee to offset such emissions. The rule is not a standard subject to CAA §209. It neith...
The Seventh Circuit upheld a lower court order enjoining a power company from building a coal-fired power plant without first obtaining a new prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) permit from the state of Illinois. The state's environmental agency granted the company a PSD permit in 2001. Th...
The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order allowing states to regulate the reimbursement of "headwater benefits" from downstream hydropower plants to upstream dam operators. To enable upstream firms to recoup part of the cost of conferring headwater be...