A district court held that a tribal appellate court had the authority to impose permit fees on an operator of a phosphorus production plant. The plant sits on 1,450 acres of land lying mostly within Shoshone-Bannock Fort Hall Reservation, and produced 22 million tons of waste stored on the reservati...

An Illinois appellate court held that owners of an apartment building tainted by a leaky underground gasoline storage tank should have been allowed to join cleanup litigation brought by the state. The state sued two oil companies for a 2014 spill that contaminated soil and groundwater. The spill cre...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a district court decision that allocated 100% liability under CERCLA to a government contractor seeking contribution from the U.S. government. For 60 years the contractor operated a manufacturing facility where it manufactured aircrafts primarily for the U.S. government. F...

The Ninth Circuit held that a trial court did not err in not allowing evidence of the defendant's diminished mental capacity in a case involving a criminal conviction under RCRA. The defendant was sentenced to 46 months in prison for storing more than 3,000 containers of paint and paint-related mate...

A district court ruled that a manufacturing company will not be required to conduct further investigation of contamination that is already subject to a remediation agreement. In 2010, a consent agreement between the manufacturing company and a golf course owner obligated the company to perform remed...

A district court ruled that passive migration of benzene from a former steel mill to an adjoining shipyard does not make the owners liable for a "disposal" under CERCLA. The plaintiff's shipyard contained a "graving dock," which is used for the "repair or scrapping of ships under dry conditions." Th...

A district court held that an industrial chemical company is not liable for fines for refusing to comply with an administrative order under CERCLA. In an previous decision, the company was found jointly and severally liable for the release of dioxin at the Centredale Manor Restoration Project Superf...

A district court held that a natural gas company can seek contribution from the federal government for uranium contamination cleanup under CERCLA. The company filed suit against the federal government for contribution for costs incurred cleaning up 19 former uranium mines on a Navajo reservation as ...

The Tenth Circuit held that a mining company has the right to recover cleanup costs at a Superfund site because the U.S. government was an owner under the statute. Over the last century, the mining company and its corporate predecessors mined molybdenum at a site near Questa, New Mexico. The mining ...

A district court held that an agriculture company cannot pursue Superfund cost recovery against Spokane, Washington, over polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination in the Spokane River. The company produced PCBs from 1935 to 1970 that the city of Spokane claimed contributed to the impairment of t...