A district court held that environmental groups may go forward with their CWA lawsuit against a rail carrier for allowing coal dust from open-top rail cars to be released into U.S. waterways. At issue was whether coal dust from rail cars that falls onto land, rather than directly into the waters, of...

The Sixth Circuit held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers complied with NEPA and the CWA when it issued a §404 permit to a mining company for a secondary mining project that was part of a larger mining operation in Kentucky. The Kentucky Division of Mine Permits, which has exclusive jurisdiction...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a railroad right-of-way that crossed land the United States conveyed to a family in a 1976 land patent was an easement that was extinguished when the railroad formally abandoned it in 2004, thereby leaving the family's land unburdened. The U.S. government initiated t...