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 court holds that a low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) facility developer lacks standing to challenge the Secretary of the Interior's rescission of its previous record of decision approving the sale and transfer of federal land to the state of California, which would have allowed the developer to...
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...
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...
The Fourth Circuit held that the Federal Power Act (FPA) does not grant the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permitting jurisdiction when a state denies approval of a permit application within one year. Two state utilities commissions and two community interest organizations challenged se...
The D.C. Circuit denied a petition challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 's (FERC's) approval of the Electric Reliability Organization's (ERO's) method for allocating costs based on net energy for load. The ERO was created under §215 of the Federal Power Act to establish and enfo...
A district court denied environmental groups’ motion for partial summary judgment with respect to their claim that the United States’ maintenance of the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet violated EPA’s surface water criterion regulations promulgated pursuant to §4004(a) of RCRA. Althou...
The Court of Federal Claims held that nuclear utilities were entitled to almost $57 million in mitigation expenses related to DOE’s failure to accept nuclear waste by the date set forth in the contract between the utilities and DOE. In their suit, the utilities sought, among other things, cost...
A district court dismissed a city's RCRA and the California Hazardous Substances Account Act against the United States in a dispute concerning the environmental remediation of Old Hammer Field in Fresno, California. The site, presently occupied by an airport, was used by the United States as an Army...