A district court denied summary judgment for Native American tribes in a challenge to EPA's approval of Minnesota's 2021 revised water quality standards. The revisions replaced quantitative standards with qualitative narrative standards that describe the characteristics Minnesota waters must have to...
United States v. Flint Hills Resources Ingleside, LLC, No. 2:24-cv-00079 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 8, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, a settling CWA and OPA defendant that allegedly discharged about 14,000 gallons of crude oil that spilled into Corpus Christi Bay from a ruptured pipe on a dock at the defendant's crude oil storage terminal in Ingleside, Texas, must pay a total of $989,212.80.
United States v. D.R. Horton, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-00428-AMM (N.D. Ala. Apr. 8, 2024). Under a proposed consent decree, settling CWA defendants that violated stormwater management requirements at 16 homebuilding construction sites must implement specified stormwater management practices, implement a supplemental environmental project that will cost $400,000, and pay a civil penalty of $400,000.
EPA proposed to promulgate a CWA chronic aquatic life ambient water quality criterion for waters under the state of Idaho’s jurisdiction to protect aquatic life from exposure to harmful concentrations or levels of total mercury.
Concerned by methane’s potent climate-altering emissions, a growing number of states and municipalities have embraced the phaseout of natural gas as a tool to mitigate climate change. But in April 2023, the California Restaurant Association successfully petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn the city of Berkeley’s ban on natural gas infrastructure in new buildings. The three-judge panel found the ban preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and in January 2024, the Ninth Circuit denied Berkeley’s petition for rehearing.