A district court vacated a provision of President Trump's 2017 Executive Order that reopened Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas and canyon areas in the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas exploration. Environmental groups argued the president did not have authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands ...

A district court granted EPA's motion to dismiss a CWA lawsuit seeking to require the Agency to publish New York's water quality standards. The Agency asserted that environmental groups lacked subject matter jurisdiction to bring the suit because EPA had a discretionary, rather than nondiscretionary...

A district court denied a manufacturing company's motion to dismiss a CWA lawsuit alleging that the company improperly stored and disposed of industrial waste at its sheet metal manufacturing facility. The company argued that an environmental group did not have standing to sue because it failed to n...

The Second Circuit vacated a decision by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denying a state water quality certification for construction of a natural gas pipeline through northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York. The pipeline company argued that the Department's denial...

The D.C. Circuit vacated a FERC decision concerning a licensee's decommissioning plan with reviewing states for hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River. A Native American tribe challenged FERC's determination that California and Oregon had not waived their water quality certification authority un...

A state appellate court reversed a judgment against a coastal use permit issued by Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources for construction of an oil pipeline. The Department argued that the lower court erred in not deferring to the Department's finding that its coastal use permit (CUP) guidelin...

A district court dismissed a Native American tribe's lawsuit challenging a proposed sulfide mine along the banks of the Menominee River, which forms the border between Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The tribe argued, pursuant to the Act's citizen suit provision, that EPA and the U.S. Army...

In an unpublished opinion, a state appellate court affirmed a lower court's ruling that a Wisconsin landowner violated state law by discharging fill material into a wetland on his property. The lower court found that the landowner had filled waters of the state without obtaining a permit, in violati...

The Fourth Circuit vacated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' verification that construction of a natural gas pipeline could proceed in West Virginia under the terms and conditions of CWA Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12. Environmental groups argued that the Corps improperly incorporated the state's condit...

A district court vacated nationwide the Applicability Date Rule, which suspended the effect of the Clean Water Rule until February 2020 and required agencies in the interim to apply the pre-Clean Water Rule definition of "waters of the United States." Environmental groups argued that EPA and the U.S...