The Sixth Circuit held that residents of Flint, Michigan, may pursue class claims against state actors in state court. In January 2016, several plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit in state court stemming from the Flint water crisis. In April 2016, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality...
A district court held that the Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) did not violate NEPA when it decided to proceed with a water supply project. In 2002, the Province of Manitoba sued under NEPA to prevent the Bureau from proceeding with the Northwest Area Water Supply Project (NAWS), arguing that an Apri...
A district court allowed suits against two manufacturing companies to go forward for groundwater contamination. Residents of Hoosick Falls, New York, brought suit against the manufacturers after they discovered perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in their water supply. The residents, in 16 consolidated ca...
A California appellate court held that the Water District of Orange County may pursue state Superfund claims for groundwater contamination. In 1998, the District discovered two VOCs in groundwater drawn from the South Basin area. In 2001, perchlorate was discovered in a well, leading the District to...
A district court rejected a public utility's attempt at a global settlement with those impacted by a 2014 chemical spill into West Virginia's Elk River. On January 9, 2014, over 224,000 residents of Charleston, West Virginia, and the surrounding area suffered an interruption in their water supply ca...
A Minnesota appeals court held that the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) erred by not obtaining a federal permit for a construction project that affected a lake's water level. Hoffman Lake and West McDonald Lake are separated by a strip of land less than 10 feet wide. In 2015, a Hoff...
A district court held that the approval of a mining project in Montana violated NEPA, the CWA, and the National Forest Management Act. A mining company submitted a plan to the Forest Service and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to extract copper and silver from an ore vein that ...
The D.C. Circuit held that the federal government is not required to reveal the location of water wells under an exemption to FOIA. A environmental group dedicated to protecting the Northern California ecosystem and watersheds filed FOIA requests seeking copies of all documents related to water tran...
A New Jersey appellate court ruled that an insurance company must indemnify a realty company for soil removal connected to groundwater contamination at one of its properties. By merger, the realty company became the successor in ownership to a property that had been leased to a recycling company. Fo...
A district court vacated a jury verdict and award of $4.2 million award in favor of two Pennsylvania families in a case involving well water contamination from a fracking operation. In 2009, 44 families sued an oil company for damages suffered as a result of the company's natural gas drilling operat...