A district court dismissed as untimely Alaska's lawsuit challenging the 2001 roadless rule, which prohibits roadwork and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forest, including 14.7 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in Alaska. Alaska's cause of action accrued in...
A district court dismissed CWA claims brought by an environmental group seeking to compel an electric company to obtain NPDES permits for its facilities. The group alleged that activities conducted at the facilities and the materials stored there contaminate stormwater discharged from the sites. Whi...
The First Circuit held that a lower court erred in dismissing a landowner's CWA citizen suit for lack of proper pre-suit notice. The landowner filed suit against the neighboring property owner—an automobile salvage and recycling business—for discharging pollutants into U.S. waters without a vali...
The U.S. Supreme Court held that stormwater runoff from logging roads that is collected by and then discharged from a system of ditches, culverts, and channels is not a point source discharge for which an NPDES permit is required. An environmental group filed suit claiming that the Oregon forestry d...
A West Virginia court reversed a decision by the state environmental quality board in which it remanded a NPDES permit for a mining company to the state environmental agency for further review and analysis. The board's decision not to defer to the state agency's interpretation of water quality stand...
The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's record of decision determining the method for restoring a flood-damaged road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada. The Forest Service's interpretation of the applicable fish and wildlife restoration standards is reasonable. Accordingly,...
The Ninth Circuit held that BLM complied with NEPA and FLPMA when it allowed a uranium mine to resume operations, after a 17-year hiatus, under a plan of operations the agency approved in 1988. Environmental groups argued that the 1988 plan of operations became ineffective after the mine closed in t...
A district court denied a poultry-processing company's motions for a new trial, for a judgment of acquittal, and to arrest judgment in a CWA case in which the company was found guilty for discharging untreated wastewater to a city's publicly owned treatment works. The city's pretreatment program pro...
A North Carolina court held that the state's environmental agency has the authority to require an egg farm to obtain a NPDES permit to prevent airborne pollutants from reaching state waters. The egg farm does not make any direct discharges into state waters, but ammonia and other pollutants may ente...