A district court dismissed a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) for the flooding and inundation of approximately 80% of the city of New Orleans caused by levee breaches following Hurricane Katrina. The claim is barred by the Flood Control Act of 1928. Section 7...
The Fifth Circuit upheld an individual's convictions for Clean Water Act (CWA) violations, mail fraud, and conspiracy. The case arose after the individual sold house lots and designed and certified septic systems on wetlands but represented the lots as dry. The septic systems on the lots failed, cau...
A district court overruled the White House's exemption of an environmental ban on sonar use by the U.S. Navy. The court previously issued a preliminary injunction ordering the U.S. Navy to implement various mitigation measures to protect marine mammals from mid-frequency sonar used during training e...
A district court denied motions to dismiss an environmental group's lawsuit against two mining operations for discharging selenium in excess of what was allowed under their Clean Water Act (CWA) permits. The environmental group sufficiently stated a claim under the CWA. Contrary to the mining compan...
A district court held that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) violated §402 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act by approving plans for a military air station off the coast of Okinawa Island, Japan, without taking into account the effect of the...
A district court dismissed a property owner's claims for recovery of its response costs and a declaration of future liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) §§107 and 113 against the former owner of the property. The statute of limi...
A Michigan appellate court held that Michigan's concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) permit program violates the Clean Water Act (CWA) because it does not require inclusion of the required minimum effluent limitations in the general permit and it does not provide for the requisite public par...
The Tenth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service's decision to issue a special use permit to a company to conduct helicopter skiing operations in the Wasatch-Cache and Uinta National Forests complied with the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The For...
The D.C. Circuit denied an environmental group's petition challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) 2007 critical use exemption for methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting substance. The 2007 exemption applied a framework that EPA adopted in a 2004 rule—a rule that the group ch...
A California appellate court upheld the dismissal of the state's Unfair Competition Law (UCL) claim against a lumber company for misrepresenting and concealing crucial facts during administrative environmental review proceedings held in connection with a 1996 agreement to sell the Headwaters Forest,...