On January 19, 1971, the 9th Circuit held that eight individual members of a conservation association who lived near and claimed beneficial use of San Francisco Bay had standing to challenge defendant Leslie Salt Company's plan to fill portions of the Bay in violation of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, 33 U.S.C. §§401 et seq. (1 ELR 41141). The Alameda Conservation Association was denied standing, because it did not assert that actual harm to its protected interests would result from the proposed landfill. The circuit court's decision on standing reversed the district court's grant of defendant's motion to dismiss, but the court agreed with the lower court's denial of plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction and sustained that denial.

The separate concurring and dissenting opinions of the panel (Hamley, Merrill, and Trask) further confuse the application of the standing doctrine to public interest lawsuits in the federal courts and demonstrate the wisdom of the Supreme Court's grant of the writ of certiorari in Sierra Club v. Hickel, 1 ELR 20015. See "Sierra Club v. Hickel: Standing and the Supreme Court," 1 ELR 10002.