The Federal Claims court ordered DOE to pay three utility companies $10,632,454.83 for failing to collect spent nuclear fuel from the Wolf Creek Generating Station in Kansas in violation of their contract. The utilities' damages derive from their investigation of alternative spent nuclear fu...

A district court held that CERCLA's statute of limitations does not bar the United States from recovering certain costs it incurred in 1993 and 1995 responding to soil and ground water contamination at the Fletcher Paint Works and Storage Facility Superfund site in Milford, New Hampshire. Af...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging a city's approval of a project to build 560 residential units on a 200-acre site long used for agricultural purposes. A citizens group filed a petition, claiming that the environmental impact report (...

The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision validating $650 million in "certificates of participation" to finance a water district's purchase of 73,000 acres of land owned by a sugar company for Everglades restoration purposes. Certificates of pa...

The Supreme Court of Texas, on certification from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, held that Texas does not recognize a "rolling" public beachfront access easement on Galveston's West Beach. Land patents from the Republic of Texas in 1840, affirmed by legislation in the new s...

The Tenth Circuit held that the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste allows its member states to exclude low-level radioactive waste from disposal at a Utah site. A disposal facility in Utah, a member state, sought permission from the compact to import and dispose of l...

The D.C. Circuit granted a petition challenging the NRC's transfer of regulatory authority over nuclear material to the state of New Jersey. Before transferring authority to a state, the NRC must find that the state's regulatory regime is compatible with the NRC's program. To evaluate the co...

A district court issued a preliminary injunction ordering genetically modified sugar beet seedlings—called stecklings—that were planted by four seed companies pursuant to permits issued by the USDA to be removed from the ground. Plaintiffs have made a strong showing that they and the environment...

A Wisconsin appellate court held that an insurer has no duty to indemnify a manufacturing company for costs it incurred cleaning up private landowners' property that was part of a larger environmental remediation effort required by the government. The parties previously stipulated that the insurer w...