The court holds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) guidelines for carrying out the certification of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's (WIPP's) compliance with radioactive waste disposal regulations are specific enough to qualify as "criteria" under 40 C.F.R. Part 191. The court note...
The court dismisses environmental groups' complaint alleging that the National Environmental Policy Act requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to prepare a supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) addressing new information concerning the use of the Los Alamos National L...
The court denies environmental groups' motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapon Stockpile Stewardship and Management (SSM) facilities, as well as activities or major upgrades to mission capability based on alleged violations of the National Env...
Editors' Summary: EPA recently proposed for public comment a draft guidance document that discusses voluntary federal recommendations for hundreds of thousands of nonhazardous industrial waste sites that currently escape RCRA regulation. In this Dialogue, a member of the chartered advisory group that assisted the Agency in the development of the document discusses its attributes and shortcomings. The Dialogue describes the history of EPA's use of RCRA Subtitle D and the statutory and programmatic obstacles to meaningful federal regulation.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed a district court decision that Utah's statutes regulating the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel are preempted by federal law. Contrary to the state's arguments, the plaintiffs who challenge the statutes—a consortium of utility companies and a Native Americ...
Editor's Summary: In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its most recent pronouncement on the executive foreign affairs preemption doctrine in American Insurance Ass'n v. Garamendi. In this Article, Kimberly Breedon argues that lower courts are prone to overbroad applications of Garamendi because the Court assumed the presence of three elements when it developed the standard for executive foreign affairs preemption of state law: (1) formal source law; (2) nexus to a foreign entity; and (3) indication of intent by the executive to preempt the state law under challenge.
The court holds that a settlement agreement between a state solid waste authority and a private waste disposal company does not violate the Sherman Act or the federal Commerce Clause. The agreement requires both the state authority and the company to respect one another's municipal contracts by reje...
The court holds that the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) denial under the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Land Withdrawal Act of an application to drill on an oil and gas lease did not constitute a permanent taking of the leaseholder's rights. BLM denied the application until the U.S. Environ...
The court holds that the failure of the United States to regulate the passage of a ship carrying nuclear waste through waters in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is not a major federal action. Therefore, the court dismisses an environmental group's National Environmental Policy Act claims agai...
In a suit raising constitutional challenges to the siting of a regional low-level radioactive waste disposal facility, the court holds that freedom from environmental releases of nonnatural radiation is not a fundamental, unenumerated right protected by the Ninth Amendment, and differences in the fe...