The court holds that a contribution claim under the 1989 Washington state Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) against a railroad reorganized in bankruptcy is not subject to a 1985 claims bar date. The claim arose out of an environmental cleanup of a railyard located within the Commencement Bay/Nearshore...

The court grants a preliminary injunction to restrain enforcement of New Jersey's flow control regulations for construction and demolition (C&D) debris and to require implementation of an alternative state regulatory plan. The regulations required some types of debris not separated into recyclab...

The court dismisses strict liability, negligence, and trespass claims that a past owner of a site containing corroded underground gasoline storage tanks brought against another past owner and the successors to past lessees of the site. The court first finds that there are no genuine issues of fact t...

The court holds that the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not bar a citizen group that was denied attorney fees by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality from asserting a Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) claim against the state agency in federal court. The ...

The court affirms a district court order directing the U.S. government to release, under §2001(k)(1) of the Fiscal Year 1995 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief and Rescissions Act, all timber sale contracts offered or awarded between October 1, 1990, and July 27, 1995, in any...

The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was not constitutionally barred from considering a facility's boiler and industrial furnace (BIF) permit application while a federal government suit over the facility's alleged incineration of hazardous waste without a permit was pe...

The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not "utilize" a cement industry working group as an "advisory committee" within the meaning of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Although EPA determined the schedule and made other logistical arrangements for meetings w...

The court rules that the Price-Anderson Act does not bar, under an exception to the tribal exhaustion doctrine, Native American tribal court jurisdiction over an action against corporations operating a uranium processing mill on the Navajo Reservation in alleged violation of tribal law. Under the tr...

The court holds that a federal statutory requirement that holders of unpatented mining claims pay $100 per claim in 1993 and 1994 or else forfeit their claims did not effect an uncompensated taking of claimholders' property in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The fee replac...

The court refuses to approve a proposed consent decree requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue a notice of proposed revisions to its hazardous waste identification rule by August 15, 1995, and to issue its final rules by December 15, 1996. The court first holds that a state...