A district court held on motions for summary judgment that a hazardous waste management company should be held liable under CERCLA for PCE contamination, but that material issues of disputed fact preclude a finding that an employee should be liable as an "operator." The testimony of the company's ex...

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition challenging the FAA's decision that no EIS was necessary to commence operating commercial passenger service at an industrial airport near Everett, Washington. The FAA prepared an EA, but chose not to prepare an EIS following its finding of no significant environme...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to close to domestic sheep grazing approximately 70% of allotments on which grazing had been permitted in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The Forest Service's decision was made in response to concerns about disease transmission to imm...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow motorized vehicles on just 62 of 869 miles of user-created roads and trails in the Tahoe National Forest. To implement the 2005 Travel Management Rule in the Tahoe National Forest, the Forest Service pre...

A district court, on motions for summary judgment, dismissed all but one of a property owner's environmental, waste, and breach of lease claims against various manufacturing companies that leased the site. The owner has been leasing the property since 1972, but it has largely been an absentee landlo...

The Eighth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the dismissal of an individual's RCRA lawsuit against a city for using road salt to melt snow and ice on a street located within a flood plain. Because the road salt was released into the environment as an expected consequence of its intended use...

A district court held that New York may seek response costs and natural resource damages under CERCLA in connection with a contaminated industrial site in Long Island, a portion of which was listed on the NPL in 2011. The state's past response actions at the site were consistent with the national co...

A district court dismissed a company's declaratory judgment action concerning its liability for cleanup costs that EPA incurred at the Hudson Oil Refinery Superfund site in Cushing, Oklahoma. The company owned and operated the site from 1943 to 1977, when it sold the refinery to the current owner. I...

A district court held that the owner of a contaminated property that was once the site of a paper mill may not seek response costs from a company that had purchased the assets of the prior owner of the mill. The owner argued that the company was liable under CERCLA under a de facto merger theory of ...