A district court held that a local sanitation department that owns and operates a complex sanitary sewer conveyance system and 13 wastewater treatment plants must pay penalties for the unintended discharge of sewage following heavy rainfall in the spring of 2010. The department previously entere...

The Eleventh Circuit upheld a restaurant manager's conviction for conspiring to illegally dump restaurant grease into U.S. waters in violation of the CWA. The evidence was easily sufficient to sustain a finding that he conspired to intentionally violate the CWA. He was the supervisor of four res...

The Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's CWA action against a city for violations at its wastewater treatment plants. The lower court erred in ruling that a 2002 consent decree between the city and the U.S. government requiring the city t...

The Federal Circuit reversed in part a lower court's award of damages in favor of an energy company in a case involving the government's breach of its commitment to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. The court reversed the award of damages relating to the costs of operating a spent fuel pool after t...

A district court held that a property owner is not entitled to attorney fees from the U.S. government in an underlying case in which the government was found liable under RCRA for trichloroethylene contamination at the site. The lower court held that the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force were liable as...

A New Jersey appellate court held that two defendants in a state environmental cleanup suit may seek contribution from numerous third parties under the New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act. The state's environmental agency filed environmental cleanup suits against nine business entities...

The Fifth Circuit held that the CWA does not provide citizens the right to sue to enforce the conditions of §404 permits. Environmental groups filed a citizen suit against the Atchafalaya Basin Program, alleging that it violated its dredge and fill permit for Bayou Postillion in Iberia Parish, ...

The Eleventh Circuit upheld a lower court decision that a Native American tribe was not entitled to attorney fees in an underlying case in which it sought to enjoin a Florida water district from pumping polluted canal water into Lake Okeechobee. In that case, the lower court found in favor of the tr...

A North Carolina appellate court held that a state statute that places limitations on the size and location of solid waste landfills does not violate the Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state waste. It is undisputed that the statute, N.C. Gen. Stat. §130A-295.6 (2011), does not fac...