A district court held that EPA does not have a mandatory duty to review an amendment to the Pennsylvania Sewage Facilities Act under the CWA. The amendment allows the use of certain on-lot sewage systems to satisfy the state's antidegradation requirements. An environmental group claimed the amendmen...

A district court dismissed environmentalists' claim that EPA should have reviewed the entirety of Florida's impaired water rule (IWR), not just the portion that constitutes a new or revised water quality standard. States retain discretion to enact and to enforce—without EPA’s review and approval...

The Eleventh Circuit remanded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' conclusion that Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP 21), a general permit that allows surface coal mining operations to discharge dredged or fill materials into navigable waters, would have no more than minimal environmental effects under NEPA an...

A district court held that although EPA did not violate its nondiscretionary duty under the CWA to either approve or disapprove a TMDL for PCBs in the state of Washington, it acted contrary to law in determining that a "Regional Toxics Task Force" was a suitable alternative. Environmental groups fil...

The Fourth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, affirmed a lower court decision upholding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' conclusion that it has jurisdiction over wetlands on a developer's property. The developer wanted to fill 4.8 acres of wetlands in order to build 10 homes. The wetlands are loca...

The D.C. Circuit upheld DOI's five-year plan for oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf (OCS). A nonprofit group argued that the 2012-2017 leasing schedule violated §18(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs how DOI is to balance competing economic, social, and enviro...

The U.S. Supreme Court adopted a Special Master's determination that Nebraska "knowingly failed" to comply with its obligations under a 2002 settlement agreement that resolved an underlying water allocation dispute between Nebraska and Kansas. The settlement established mechanisms to accurately meas...

A district court dismissed a flood protection board's lawsuit against 88 oil and gas companies for damages stemming from coastal erosion along a "buffer zone" in southeast Louisiana. The companies do not owe a legal duty to the board, arising under either Louisiana law or the Rivers and Harbors Act,...

An Ohio appellate court held that the state environmental review board erred in affirming portions of Ohio EPA's CWA §401 water quality certification that prohibited a coal mining company from impacting certain wetlands. The mining company, which has a permit to mine approximately 1,100 acres of la...

A district court held that a Hawaiian county violated the CWA by discharging effluent without a NPDES permit at two of four injection wells at the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility. At issue was whether the discharges were from a point source. The county argued that when a single point source ...