The provision of the federal Department of Transportation Act, designed to protect parklands, recreational areas, wildlife refuges and historic sites, originally effective April 1, 1967, is not applicable to a federal aid highway for which "contract drawings" were approved by DOT on Nov. 18, 1966. F...

Plaintiffs' action alleging injury to riparian rights by upstream industrial polluters is dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, 33 U.S.C. §407, does not create a federal cause of action to protect a private right unrelated to navigation or anc...

Plaintiff landowners granted a preliminary injunction barring further court condemnation proceedings in which their land is sought for use as the site for a sewage disposal plant for the city of Lufkin, Texas. Defendant Ruckelshaus is enjoined, pending the outcome of the suit, from committing federa...

Motion to dismiss an action brought by information for dumping refuse in navigable waters denied. Willfullness and obstruction of navigation are not essential elements for a cause of action under the Refuse Act, 33 U.S.C. §407. Compliance with a water standard set up under the Water Pollution Contr...

County Road Commissioners are ordered to remove road fill from a pond situated between lands of plaintiff and adjacent landowner and to restore the three-to-four-acre inland pond to its preexisting freshwater condition. Notwithstanding the fact that the road fill traverses only a part of the pond su...

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, sitting en banc, reverses the denial of further injunctive relief against the issuance of a special land use permit for construction purposes on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Project. The court concludes that the grant of a right-o...

In holding that a private party does not have standing to sue public officials under the Water Pollution Control Act, the court relies on the dual test of Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1970). The appellants meet the first requirement because "the challen...

Partial injunctive relief is granted in a suit challenging the construction of the substantially complete five-mile Forty-Seventh Street Bypass, on the ground that responsible officials failed to file a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) impact statement. The court holds that the limited gener...

The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency must promulgate final emission standards for the hazardous pollutants for which proposed standards had been promulgated in December 1971, within 60 days following the order of the court. Under §112 of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, the...

In continuing to enjoin the Department of Defense (for issuance of injunction see 2 ELR 20739) from further Pacific Cratering Experiments on Enewetak Atoll, the court holds that Congress intended to include the Trust Territory under the coverage of the National Environmental Policy Act and that resi...