The Eighth Circuit vacated two EPA letters announcing new legislative rules for water treatment processes at municipally owned sewer system. EPA admitted it did not engage in notice and comment procedures, but it insisted there has been no procedural impropriety because the letters should be conside...

A district court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the CWA and NEPA when it issued a §404 permit allowing a mining company to permanently fill 11,194 linear feet of streams in Boone County, West Virginia. The court previously issued a remand order requiring the Corps to: (1) re-is...

A district court dismissed CWA claims brought by an environmental group seeking to compel an electric company to obtain NPDES permits for its facilities. The group alleged that activities conducted at the facilities and the materials stored there contaminate stormwater discharged from the sites. Whi...

The First Circuit held that a lower court erred in dismissing a landowner's CWA citizen suit for lack of proper pre-suit notice. The landowner filed suit against the neighboring property owner—an automobile salvage and recycling business—for discharging pollutants into U.S. waters without a vali...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that stormwater runoff from logging roads that is collected by and then discharged from a system of ditches, culverts, and channels is not a point source discharge for which an NPDES permit is required. An environmental group filed suit claiming that the Oregon forestry d...

The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction prohibiting an environmental activist group from interfering with an oil company's outer continental shelf (OCS) exploration activities in the Arctic Ocean. The lower court's preliminary injunction barred the group from coming within specified distances of vess...

A West Virginia court reversed a decision by the state environmental quality board in which it remanded a NPDES permit for a mining company to the state environmental agency for further review and analysis. The board's decision not to defer to the state agency's interpretation of water quality stand...

A California appellate court upheld the California Department of Water Resources' (DWR's) method for crediting State Water Project (SWP) water recipients with revenues from hydropower generated at the Oroville Dam. DWR purchases the hydropower for use within the SWP, but some of it is pooled with ot...

A district court held that an environmental group may go forward with its citizens suit action against a water district for ongoing SDWA violations concerning, among other things, the sampling, monitoring, and reporting of dangerous contaminants. The water district filed a motion to dismiss, arguing...

A district court denied a poultry-processing company's motions for a new trial, for a judgment of acquittal, and to arrest judgment in a CWA case in which the company was found guilty for discharging untreated wastewater to a city's publicly owned treatment works. The city's pretreatment program pro...