The court upholds a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Appeals Board decision finding a dental supplies distribution company liable under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) for distributing unregistered pesticides. A sales agreement the company entered in...
The court reverses a district court decision that even though a county waste treatment plant's national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit did not prohibit the discharge of heat, the plant violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) when it discharged warm water to a stream since the NPDES...
ELR Digest
The court affirms a district court's holding that a dredge and dock company is liable under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA) for damages to the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary caused by a grounded tugboat and a dredge pipe, but vacates and remands the district court's approval of...
The court held that a riparian owner may dredge public underwater lands if dredging is necessary to provide reasonable access to navigable waters and does not unreasonably interfere with the rights of the owner. A petroleum storage facility that operates on a bay sought to dredge the basin near its ...
A district court held that FWS' decision to withdraw its proposed listing of the "bi-state sage grouse" as threatened under the ESA was arbitrary and capricious. FWS recognized that one of the studies it relied on was questionable. In addition, FWS violated its own policy when it failed to offer any...
The Fourth Circuit, in an unpublished decision, vacated FWS' incidental take statement that authorized a pipeline project along the Atlantic coast to take certain threatened or endangered species. The limits set by the agency were so indeterminate that they undermined the incidental take statement's...
The D.C. Circuit vacated EPA's placement of the West Vermont Drinking Water Contamination site, a site of groundwater contamination beneath Indianapolis, Indiana, on the NPL. EPA used the hazard ranking system (HRS) to determine whether listing was appropriate. As part of that process, EPA assessed ...
A Federal Claims court held that the Surface Transportation Board (STB) temporarily took landowners' property without just compensation for use as an interim trail under the National Trails System Act. The landowners' predecessors-in-interest sold right-of-way easements to a railroad for operation o...
A district court held that a city council breached a development agreement for a proposed export terminal when it passed an ordinance that banned coal operations at "bulk materials facilities" as well as a resolution that applied the ban to the proposed terminal. The development agreement froze in p...
The court affirms in part and reverses in part the Federal Subsistence Board's decision to impose an antler restriction on subsistence uses of moose in game management unit (GMU) 15 on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. The court first holds that the board's reading of the term priority within the meaning...