A district court held that EPA violated the CWA when it failed to review Oregon's nonpoint source rules. The nonpoint source provisions create exemptions for many sources of pollution in Oregon's waters, including agriculture, forestry, and grazing. EPA claimed that the regulations at issue were...
A district court held that under a 1997 consent decree resolving CWA, RCRA, and state-law violations at a steel mill, the current owner is not liable for remediating any discharges that occurred prior to its purchase of the mill out of the previous owner's bankruptcy, but that it must conduct a site...
A New York court upheld a town's enactment of a zoning law that bans oil and gas drilling, including hydraulic fracturing, within the geographical borders of the township. The holder of two gas leases argued that §23-0303 of New York's Environmental Conservation Law preempts the zoning law. The...
The Fourth Circuit upheld an injunction requiring the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to obtain NPDES permits for reclamation efforts at abandoned coal mining sites. The text of the CWA, as well as corresponding EPA regulations, confirm that the permit requirements apply...
A district court upheld EPA's rule setting numeric nutrient criteria for Florida except in two respects: the stream criteria and the default downstream-protection criteria for unimpaired lakes. In 2009, recognizing that the state's narrative criterion was insufficient to control Florida's widesp...
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision that Montana may charge rent from an electric company that owns dams on the Missouri, Madison, and Clark Fork rivers. The Montana Supreme Court held that title to the riverbeds passed to Montana when it became a state in 1889 and awarded alm...
The D.C. Circuit held that a city has standing to challenge a railroad company's sale of a historic elevated railroad embankment to developers. The city argued that the sale was void because the company failed to obtain approval from the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to abandon the property...