The court affirms a district court decision holding a company liable for U.S. response costs incurred while cleaning up groundwater contamination at the Des Moines trichloroethylene (TCE) site and awarding the United States over $4 million in cleanup costs. The court first holds that the district co...

The court holds that a district court failed to obey a previous Sixth Circuit decision requiring the district court to determine the divisibility of recovery costs at a Superfund site and to use the standard set forth in United States v. Bestfoods, 524 U.S. 51, 28 ELR 21225 (1998), to determine if a...

The court holds that a district court properly determined the sentence for an individual who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the injection of hazardous waste and the disposal of hazardous waste without a permit in violation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liabili...

The court affirms a district court decision holding that an individual constructed two floats on his dock without securing a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) in violation of the Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act (RHAA) and requiring the individual to remove the floats. In 198...

The court affirms a district court decision ordering a corporate farm to pay penalties it stipulated to in a consent decree it entered into with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the restoration of wetlands destroyed by the farm's construction of a drainage ditch system without a Cl...

The court holds that a company is jointly and severally liable for costs incurred by the United States at the Friedrichsohn's Cooperage, Inc. site in Waterford, New York. The company, which was previously found liable as an arranger under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and L...

The court affirms a district court decision denying a company's request for an evidentiary hearing and approving and entering a consent decree between the government and settling potentially responsible parties (PRPs) that resolved U.S. cleanup costs incurred at the Des Moines TCE site. The governme...

The Ninth Circuit reversed in part and vacated in part a lower court decision granting summary judgment for a proposed logging project in areas of the Kootenai National Forest where two threatened species—the Canada lynx and the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear—are present. An environmental group argue...

The Fourth Circuit denied environmental groups' petition to review Virginia's issuance of §401 certification under the CWA for construction of a natural gas pipeline. The groups argued that state agencies acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the §401 certificate because the agencies didn'...

The Ninth Circuit granted environmental groups' petition to review EPA's 2017 order maintaining a tolerance for the pesticide chlorpyrifos, and vacated the Agency's order. The groups argued that the Agency's need for additional scientific research was not a valid ground for maintaining a tolerance t...