The court upholds a lower court decision finding a private water company liable for violating public health and safety regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and ordering the divestiture of all but the largest of the company's water system as a penalty for those violations. The distric...

A court holds that a refinery is liable under the Clean Air Act for violating benzene and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions limits set forth in its permits and for violating new source performance standards (NSPS) that apply to its flares. Citizen groups demonstrated that the refinery's benzene emissio...

The court holds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) properly determined that it has jurisdiction over wetlands adjacent to waters of the United States. A landowner argued that in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. U.S. A...

A court dismisses environmental groups' challenges to three National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries Service) decisions relating to the treatment of sea turtles under a fishery management plan (FMP) for the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Pe...

The court holds that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in placing conditions on owners' access to their patented mining claims within the Kootenai National Forest in Montana. The owners claimed that the Forest Service violated the APA and the Quiet Title Act whe...

A court remands to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service a 2004 biological opinion (BO) prepared for proposed operations of the Federal Columbia River Power System. The remand order was issued in response to an earlier decision in which the court found...

A court denies motions to clarify or modify an earlier decision in which it held that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lacked statutory authority to promulgate Framework 16 to the Scallop Fishery Management Plan insofar as it undid the habitat closure areas that had been established by Amendment 1...

The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in revising its "periodic" and "umbrella" monitoring regulations, 40 C.F.R. §§70.6(a)(3) and 70.6(c)(1), respectively. In rejecting two Title V permits, EPA determined that t...

A court holds that developers of a residential subdivision allowed sediment to escape the subdivision in stormwater discharges and to accumulate in nearby ponds in violation of their Clean Water Act permit. The developers argued that they should be immune from liability because they offered to remov...

A court holds that amendments to a national pollutant discharge elimination system permit that regulates a refinery's discharges of dioxins and other pollutants into Suisun Bay, California, comply with the Clean Water Act (CWA). The original permit included a water quality-based effluent limit of 0....