The Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld the state environmental agency's decision to issue a permit to a town for a municipal well. Two groups challenged the agency's decision to issue the permit without considering the well's potential impact on nearby Lake Beulah, a navigable water. A circuit c...
A district court held that environmental groups may pursue a RCRA claim against the current and former owners of a steel mill for disposing of hazardous waste without a permit, but dismissed the groups' remaining RCRA and CWA claims. The groups' claims that the mill has released and continues t...
The Eleventh Circuit held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may allocate storage water in Lake Lanier, a reservoir created in 1956 by the completion of Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee River, for water supply. A lower court ruled that the Corps' current operation of the Buford Project—Buford Da...
The Federal Circuit upheld a lower court decision rejecting landowners' claims that the United States had taken their property without just compensation by erecting a log boom that prevented them from using a slough next to their property. The government placed the log boom in the slough to ...
A Texas appellate court reversed and remanded a $550,019 judgment awarded to property owners in their suit against a neighboring convenience store for damages stemming from a leaking UST. The evidence was legally sufficient to show that the gasoline migrated from the store's property to the plai...
California's highest court upheld a regional water board's issuance of a NPDES permit authorizing a power plant to draw cooling water from an adjacent harbor and slough. An environmental group filed suit, claiming that the permit did not satisfy the "best technology available" requirement of CWA...
The South Carolina Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision dismissing a group's declaratory judgment action against a developer for filling isolated wetlands on its property without a permit. The lower court, relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Coo...
The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, reversed a lower court decision granting summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Forest Service in a case challenging its approval of four timber logging projects in the Tongass National Forest. The Forest Service failed to adequately explain it decisi...
A district court held that EPA's approval of a sediments and total suspended solids (TSS) TMDL for the Anacostia River in Maryland and Washington, D.C., was arbitrary and capricious. When developing a TMDL for a particular pollutant, the CWA and its implementing regulations require the state—in de...
The Tenth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service may charge visitors to Mt. Evans an "amenity fee" under the Recreation Enhancement Act (REA). Plaintiffs, outdoor enthusiasts, argued that the fee exceeds the Service's statutory authority under the REA. But to prevail in a facial challenge to an a...