A district court held that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is liable for damages to property owners and residents following a containment dike failure at its Kingston Fossil plant that spilled more than 5 million cubic yards of coal ash sludge over approximately 300 acres. The court determined ...

The D.C. Circuit held that the DOE Secretary's 2010 determination that there was no basis for suspending, or otherwise adjusting, annual fees collected from nuclear power plant owners and operators following the government's decision to discontinue its development of Yucca Mountain violated the Nucl...

The Ninth Circuit dismissed environmental and Alaska Native groups' petitions challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM's) approval of an oil company's exploration plan to drill in the Beaufort Sea. BOEM's decision that the company's exploration plan complied with the Outer Conti...

A district court denied an environmental group's motion to preliminarily enjoin the DOE from providing funding assistance for the construction and operation of a coal-fired power plant in Mississippi. Before granting the funding, the DOE issued an EIS evaluating the funding's environmental effects, ...

The D.C. Circuit vacated and remanded the FAA's "no hazard" determinations for a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. A town and a citizens group filed suit arguing that the FAA violated its governing statute, misread its own regulations, and arbitrarily and capriciously failed to calcula...

The court holds that the military and state secrets privilege and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) §6001 presidential exemption bar two RCRA citizen suits against the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The two suits alleged RCRA violations and sought...

The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to impose its own separate enforcement penalties on a Missouri corporation after the corporation and an authorized state agency negotiated a state court-approved settlement for Resource Conservation and R...

The court holds unlawful a U.S. Department of Commerce fishing quota that allocates the summer catch of scup on a state-by-state basis for Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. Massachusetts argued that the quota was based on incomplete historical data that reflected only scup landings from lar...