California's highest court upheld a regional water board's issuance of a NPDES permit authorizing a power plant to draw cooling water from an adjacent harbor and slough. An environmental group filed suit, claiming that the permit did not satisfy the "best technology available" requirement of CWA...

The Third Circuit held that the Secretary of Labor need only demonstrate the possibility of exposure to asbestos that is substantially probable to lead to serious harm for purposes of classifying work standard violations as "serious." The Secretary had cited a company for nine "serious" violatio...

A district court held that EPA's approval of a sediments and total suspended solids (TSS) TMDL for the Anacostia River in Maryland and Washington, D.C., was arbitrary and capricious. When developing a TMDL for a particular pollutant, the CWA and its implementing regulations require the state—in de...

The D.C. Circuit denied trade associations' petition for review of a nationwide permit issued by EPA for the discharge of pollutants incidental to the normal operation of vessels. The associations, which represent commercial ship owners and operators, raised a number of procedural challenges, al...

A district court held that utilities who sold used transformers to a scrap metal company in the 1970s are not liable under CERCLA or the Connecticut Environmental Protection Act. After Connecticut's environmental department discovered PCB contamination on the property, the current owner of t...

The Fifth Circuit vacated portions of EPA's 2008 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) rule. The rule requires CAFOs that propose to discharge to apply for an NPDES permit. But there must be an actual discharge into navigable waters to trigger the CWA's requirements. EPA, therefore,...

The Ninth Circuit held that a local flood district is liable under the CWA for discharging polluted stormwater into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers. Environmental groups filed suit against the flood district as well as against a county for unlawful stormwater discharges into the Los A...

The Fourth Circuit held that a biological opinion issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service as part of EPA's process of reregistering the insecticides chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion is subject to judicial review under the APA. The Service's biological opinion concluded that the...