A California appellate court upheld an individual's conviction for the unlawful disposal of hazardous waste but reversed his sentence. There was sufficient evidence to support his conviction and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in ordering him to pay the local hazardous materials managem...
A district court denied EPA's and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' motion to transfer to Arizona a lawsuit brought by housing and construction associations challenging the agencies' designation of two reaches of the Santa Cruz River in Arizona as "traditional navigable waters" under the CWA. Althou...
A district court denied the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' motion to dismiss an environmental group's FOIA action seeking records pertaining to permits for development on two islands in the in the Magothy River, a tributary of the Chesapeake River. The Corps argued that it properly withheld the recor...
A California appellate court upheld the dismissal of developers' petition to set aside design guidelines for a development project in North Hollywood. The design guidelines are not a zoning ordinance and, therefore, need not comply with the procedural and individualized notice requirements of the st...
A district court dismissed a landowner’s fraud and conspiracy counterclaims against the Virgin Islands on grounds of sovereign immunity. The Virgin Islands government filed suit against the landowner under CERCLA and state law for allegedly releasing hazardous substances onto its land and into...
A district court remanded to state court a city's CWA and state law claims against another city challenging its imposition of a 25% surcharge on wastewater treatment services. The plaintiff city seeks a declaration that the surcharge violates the CWA. Although the plaintiff city referred to the fede...
A district court denied a manufacturer's motion for preliminary injunction to retain the "Energy Star" energy efficiency label that DOE ordered it to remove from approximately 40,000 of its refrigerators. The central issue in the case was the proper procedures for testing the energy efficiency of th...
A California court voided an agreement between California and the four major Southern California water agencies (Metropolitan Water District, Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley Water District, and San Diego County Water Authority) concerning the allocation of water from the Colorado Rive...
A district court held that an insurance company has a duty to defend a shooting range operator in an underlying CWA, RCRA, and nuisance lawsuit concerning the discharge of lead shot into the environment. The duty to defend arises when there is a possibility that a claim may be covered by the insuran...
The D.C. Circuit ordered FERC to reconsider its reporting rules for interstate natural gas pipelines. During the public comment period, petitioners—a national trade association of gas utility companies—requested additional and more detailed reporting requirements for shipper-supplied gas for pip...