The Ninth Circuit, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, held that pollution exceedances detected at monitoring stations in Los Angeles County were sufficient to establish the county's liability for NPDES permit violations under the CWA. In Los Angeles County Flood Control Dist. v. Natural Resource...

The Seventh Circuit upheld a dredge and fill permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a highway project that crosses wetlands in Indiana. The Corps adequately considered practicable alternatives when it issued the permit. Although the Corps has an independent responsibility to enforce t...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a conservation group's CWA citizen suit alleging that a scrap metal company violated California's general NPDES permit for industrial stormwater at three of its scrap recycling facilities. The lower court dismissed the case, holding that C...

The Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed and remanded a lower court decision awarding $375,000 in damages to beachfront property owners whose oceanfront view was obstructed by a dune built to serve as a barrier from powerful storms and ocean surges. A city used its power of eminent domain to constru...

The Sixth Circuit vacated a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule exempting from the Clean Water Act's (CWA's) national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permitting requirements pesticides applied in accordance with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. The ...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a government's demand for property from a land use permit application must satisfy the "nexus" and "rough proportionality" requirements of Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825, 17 ELR 20918 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 24 ELR 21083 ...

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the Los Angeles port's "Clean Truck Program," which was designed in part to reduce emissions related to port operations, including emissions from trucks. The concession agreements implementing the plan set forth a number of provisions covering, among ot...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that Oklahoma statutes that favor in-state water appropriation permit applicants over out-of-state permit applicants do not violate the Commerce Clause and are not preempted by the Red River Water Compact—an interstate water compact that allocates water among Texas, Okl...

The Seventh Circuit upheld a FERC order allowing a regional electricity transmission system to apportion costs for new power lines necessary to bring power generated from wind farms in the Great Plains to urban centers among all the utilities drawing electricity from the grid. The costs would be all...

A district court dismissed an environmental group's APA lawsuit against EPA challenging 40 C.F.R. §124.55(b), which pertains to state certification of discharge permits issued by the Agency under the CWA. Specifically, the group challenged the portion of §124.55(b) that prohibits EPA from modifyin...