The U.S. Supreme Court holds that the national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit program applies not only to point sources that generate pollutants, but also to point sources that transfer pollutants originating elsewhere. The definition of a point source as a "conveyance" in Cle...

A district court dismissed an environmental group's CWA action against a poultry farm claiming that it illegally discharged chicken litter into tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. The group claimed that chicken litter, which is alleged to contain various pollutants, was discharged without a permit fr...

A district court held that EPA cannot regulate stormwater as a pollutant under the CWA. According to the court, the language of CWA §303(d)(1)(C) is clear. EPA may set TMDLs to regulate pollutants, and pollutants are carefully defined. Because stormwater runoff is not a pollutant under the Act, EPA...

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision holding a water district liable under the CWA for violating its municipal separate storm sewer system permit. The lower court ruled that the violations occurred when the polluted water detected at the monitoring stations flowed out of concrete-l...

The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's CWA, CERCLA, and EPCRA claims against BP and Transocean Ltd. following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP leased the mobile offshore drilling unit known as Deepwater Horizon from Transo...

A district court, in a 114-page opinion, held that a regional planning agency violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it approved the expansion of a ski resort near Lake Tahoe. The evidence fails to support the agency's finding that a reduced alternative was not economically infeasibl...

A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service violated its travel management rule, but not NEPA, when it issued its record of decision approving the Stanislaus National Forest Motorized Travel Management EIS. The agency looked at a reasonable range of alternatives to the proposed action, proper...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's adoption of the Idaho Roadless Rule, which creates different categories of land within Idaho's 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. The court affirmed and adopted as its own a lower court ruling that also approved the rule. FWS's biologi...

The Tenth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing environmental groups' case challenging decisions made by BLM and the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) concerning the legality of 39 oil and gas leases in southern Utah. In the 1980s, the owner of the leases applied to have its oil and...

The D.C. Circuit ordered EPA to repromulgate two final rules it issued under the CAA concerning the implementation of the NAAQS for fine particulate matter (PM). Environmental groups challenged EPA's decision to issue the rules pursuant to the general implementation provisions of Subpart 1 of Part D...