The Federal Claims court ordered DOE to pay three utility companies $10,632,454.83 for failing to collect spent nuclear fuel from the Wolf Creek Generating Station in Kansas in violation of their contract. The utilities' damages derive from their investigation of alternative spent nuclear fu...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...

A district court dismissed a motion to dismiss environmental groups' citizen suit against five coal companies alleging thousands of violations of the CWA and SMCRA in West Virginia. Because EPA entered into a consent decree with the companies, the defendants argued that the groups' CWA claim...

A district court granted in part and denied in part cross-motions for summary judgment on claims that the U.S. Army failed to comply with two settlement agreements requiring it to conduct and complete subsurface archaeological surveys of its munitions training grounds on the Makua Military R...

The Tenth Circuit held that the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste allows its member states to exclude low-level radioactive waste from disposal at a Utah site. A disposal facility in Utah, a member state, sought permission from the compact to import and dispose of l...

The D.C. Circuit granted a petition challenging the NRC's transfer of regulatory authority over nuclear material to the state of New Jersey. Before transferring authority to a state, the NRC must find that the state's regulatory regime is compatible with the NRC's program. To evaluate the co...

The Ninth Circuit held that EPA’s decision to transfer authority over portions of the NPDES program to the state of Alaska was not arbitrary or capricious. Petitioners argued that EPA did not adequately ensure that Alaska state law will provide the same opportunities for judicial review of permitt...

The Seventh Circuit held that an environmental group has standing to challenge a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit allowing 18.4 acres of wetlands in a state park to be destroyed to make way for a landfill. A lower court held that the group lacked standing and therefore dismissed the case. It...

The Ninth Circuit, in an amended opinion, held that stormwater runoff from logging roads that is collected by and then discharged from a system of ditches, culverts, and channels is a point source discharge for which an NPDES permit is required. Accordingly, the court reversed a lower court dec...