ELR Citation: ELR 20113
No(s). 07-13297 (11th Cir. May 9, 2008)

The Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of an environmental group who challenged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' grant of Clean Water Act (CWA) permits to mining companies allowing them to extract limestone from the “Lake Belt” area—a stretch of wetlands between the Florida Everglades and the northwestern edge of metropolitan Miami. The lower court failed to apply the appropriate Administrative Procedure Act standard to the group's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and CWA claims. Instead, it predetermined the answer to the ultimate issue—concluding that the Corps should not permit mining in the Lake Belt—and analyzed the permitting process with that answer in mind. In other words, no matter what the Corps concluded, and no matter what evidence supported that conclusion, the lower court would have banned mining because of its own determination that mining in the Lake Belt is a "bad thing." On remand, the lower court must determine whether the Corps complied with NEPA or the CWA permit process using the proper deferential standard of review.