The court rules that the district court has jurisdiction to order the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue parts certification and maintenance instruction regulations as required by §207 of the Clean Air Act. The district court had enjoined EPA from enforcing the Emis...

Affirming the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 10 ELR 20456, the Supreme Court holds that revenues received from oil and gas leases on national wildlife refuges reserved from public lands must be distributed according to the formula of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA) rather than...

Affirming the judgment of the district court, 10 ELR 20938, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Congress is constitutionally empowered to regulate surface coal mining operations producing coal solely for intrastate sale and that representatives of the Department of the Interior need not ...

The court rules that a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) is not required for a series of federal highway projects in Appalachia. The highways were conceived in 1965, and rudimentary route outlines were prepared in 1966, prior to passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)...

The court affirms in part and remands in part the lower court's decision not to enjoin weapons storage, training, and bombing activities of the United States Navy on the island of Vieques, a municipality of Puerto Rico. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico alleged that the Navy's activities in and around...

The Supreme Court vacates a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, 9 ELR 20347, upholding in part a district court decision ordering the city of Milwaukee to abate discharges of treated and untreated sewage effluent into Lake Michigan. Justice Rehnquist notes at the outset that the federal courts...

Granting defendants' motion for reconsideration of its judgment awarding $59,000 in attorney fees to plaintiffs, 11 ELR 20293, the court increases the amount awarded to $231,000. The test of the appropriateness of an award of fees is whether the underlying suit was a prudent and desirable effort to ...

The court upholds the constitutionality of provisions of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act (FCMA) permitting searches of vessels without a warrant and the assessment of penalties. A Japanese fishing vessel, holding a fishing permit issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrat...

The court rules that the construction of a refugee camp for Cuban and Haitian refugees at Fort Allen, Puerto Rico, violates §6001(2) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), §§101(b) and 102(2)(E) of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), §307 of the Coastal Zone Management A...

The court modifies and affirms the imposition of an automatic civil penalty upon the owner of an oil pipeline from which oil was discharged into navigable waters due to the act of a third party. Section 311(b)(6) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, unlike other provisions of the Act relating...