An Indiana appellate court reversed and remanded a lower court decision that an insurer need not defend and indemnify a service station owner in underlying state administrative proceedings concerning the environmental remediation of the site. The insurer argued that because the loss occurred pri...

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision directing a county board to hear an administrative appeal of an environmental impact report (EIR) and permit for a landfill expansion project. A local environmental enforcement agency issued the permit after considering and certifying ...

A North Carolina appellate court held that the state's Sedimentation Pollution Control Act (SPCA) does not apply if there was no deposition of sediment to water. The owner of a golf course claimed that a construction company was liable under the SPCA for damages stemming from land-disturbing act...

A district court held that EPA exceeded its authority under CWA §404(c) when it invalidated an existing U.S. Army Corps of Engineer permit authorizing a mining company to discharge fill material from its mountaintop coal mine into two nearby streams. Specifically, EPA withdrew the specific...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that property owners may bring a civil action under the APA to challenge EPA's issuance of a CWA §309 compliance order that directs them to restore their property immediately pursuant to an EPA work plan. The APA provides for judicial review of final agency action for wh...

The Seventh Circuit held that an insurance company has no duty to defend or indemnify a town in underlying lawsuits alleging that it knowingly supplied contaminated drinking water to its residents. In the mid-1908s, town officials learned that one of its water wells was contaminated with perc. B...

A district court held that EPA violated the CWA when it failed to review Oregon's nonpoint source rules. The nonpoint source provisions create exemptions for many sources of pollution in Oregon's waters, including agriculture, forestry, and grazing. EPA claimed that the regulations at issue were...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision granting summary judgment in favor of the U.S. government on claims challenging the DOI's accounting of approximately 9,000 acre feet of water released between June 17 and 24, 2004, from two reservoirs within California's Central Valley Project (...

A district court held that under a 1997 consent decree resolving CWA, RCRA, and state-law violations at a steel mill, the current owner is not liable for remediating any discharges that occurred prior to its purchase of the mill out of the previous owner's bankruptcy, but that it must conduct a site...