The court upholds a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decision denying an interest group's request to intervene in a nuclear power plant's license renewal proceeding. The court first holds that the NRC properly adopted an unavoidable and extreme circumstances test, instead of a good-cause test, to...
The court holds that the Court of Federal Claims improperly held that the Stafford Act, collateral estoppel, and a contract release barred a South Florida trailer park owner's breach of contract claim against the federal government, but the owner's taking and inverse condemnation claims were appropr...
The court denies petitions to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) relicensing of a hydroelectric project in Maine. The petitioners argue that FERC's rejection of minimum flow requirements in a branch of the Penobscot River that is blocked from receiving water due to a dam loca...
The court denies a construction company's petition to review an administrative law judge's (ALJ's) order upholding a nine-item citation against the company for violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards for lead exposure in construction work. The court first holds that ...
The court holds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it failed to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) prior to the permitting of three casinos on the Mississippi coast. Mississippi law requires casinos to be located on floating vessels...
The court affirms a district court holding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for a flood control project on the Mississippi River satisfied the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The court first holds that the Corps' SEIS satisfied NEPA'...
The court grants Rhode Island's motion to preliminarily enjoin proceedings before the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in which several state employees sought damages and other relief against the state for allegedly violating the Solid Waste Disposal Act's whistleblower protection provision. The court...
The last 18 months have produced particularly interesting juridical and administrative pronouncements in the areas of Clean Water Act (CWA or Act) jurisdiction, permits, standards, citizen suits, and other enforcement. On the jurisdictional front, we learned that "deep ripping" constitutes an "addition" of a pollutant by a "point source." We also learned that 25-year-old cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Since the enactment of the Clean Water Act (CWA or Act) 28 years ago, the federal courts have been called upon to sort out the respective roles of the federal and state governments in connection with numerous aspects of the statute's implementation and enforcement. Congress has superimposed an additional layer of complexity on the CWA experiment in creative federalism—the citizen suit provision.
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc. may prove to be the most important environmental decision since Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Laidlaw's primary significance lies in its discussion of the injury component of the U.S. Supreme Court's now familiar three-part standing test.