A district court held that a tribal appellate court had the authority to impose permit fees on an operator of a phosphorus production plant. The plant sits on 1,450 acres of land lying mostly within Shoshone-Bannock Fort Hall Reservation, and produced 22 million tons of waste stored on the reservati...

An Illinois appellate court held that owners of an apartment building tainted by a leaky underground gasoline storage tank should have been allowed to join cleanup litigation brought by the state. The state sued two oil companies for a 2014 spill that contaminated soil and groundwater. The spill cre...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a district court decision that allocated 100% liability under CERCLA to a government contractor seeking contribution from the U.S. government. For 60 years the contractor operated a manufacturing facility where it manufactured aircrafts primarily for the U.S. government. F...

The Washington state Shorelines Hearing Board denied plans to build a methanol refinery on the Columbia River because the plans failed to adequately consider greenhouse gas emissions. A manufacturing company proposed to manufacture methanol from natural gas supplied by a lateral pipeline, with the m...

A district court ordered EPA to issue infrastructure requirements for the 2012 fine particulate matter NAAQS for five states within 90 days. In 2015, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island missed their deadlines to present compliance plans for the 2012 fine p...

The Ninth Circuit held that a trial court did not err in not allowing evidence of the defendant's diminished mental capacity in a case involving a criminal conviction under RCRA. The defendant was sentenced to 46 months in prison for storing more than 3,000 containers of paint and paint-related mate...

A district court ruled that a manufacturing company will not be required to conduct further investigation of contamination that is already subject to a remediation agreement. In 2010, a consent agreement between the manufacturing company and a golf course owner obligated the company to perform remed...