The court has jurisdiction under §7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to hear a suit seeking to halt construction of an interstate highway through the habitat of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane, but rules that the plaintiffs are not entitled to the requested relief. The crane is an endangered sp...
The district court erred in dismissing a suit challenging both the EPA Administrator's initial listing of only nine toxic pollutants pursuant to §307 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 and the criteria he employed for the inclusion of pollutants on the list. The lower cou...
The injection of organic chemical wastes into subsurface wells whose waters are not alleged to flow into or otherwise affect surface waters does not constitute a "discharge of a pollutant" within the meaning of §301(a) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. The legislative h...
A complaint seeking to collect civil money penalties for alleged water pollution discharges in violation of an NPDES permit and an EPA order is dismissed with leave to amend. Section 309(d) of Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments does not provide for a fine of $10,000 per day for each sepa...
Interior Department regulations imposing summer-season weekend restrictions on commercial fishing at portions of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore are remanded to the agency for further proceedings concerning, inter alia, the impact of the regulation on the cultural heritage of affected fishermen....
This unanimous en banc opinion on the merits follows the court of appeals' temporary opinion, 4 ELR 20598, on its stay of the district court's injunction, 4 ELR 20573, which had ordered Reserve to cease any further discharge of asbestos-bearing taconite wastes into Lake Superior from its plant at Si...
The EPA Administrator neither misinterpreted congressional intent nor violated the Constitution in making the enforcement penalties of §113 of the Clean Air Act applicable to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for any failure by it to implement the Philadelphia Transportation Plan. Although §113 may...
Primarily because of the inadequacies of an environmental impact statement (EIS), the court issues a preliminary injunction against a North Carolina secondary highway improvement project funded in part by the Federal Highway Administration. Although the project EIS was not vitiated by having been pr...
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reverses and remands a lower court's dismissal of a complaint alleging that the Navy's dumping of polluted dredge spoil at the New London dump site in Long Island Sound violates both NEPA and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. In view of t...
The court upholds a decision by the Adirondack Park Agency to prohibit boathouses in its approval of plans to develop private property fronting on a lake used as a part of a scenic waterway within the park and designated a recreational river by state statute. Because the act creating the agency esta...