Justia Environmental Law Opinion Summaries

This case involved a motion for fees and costs under section 307(f) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7607(f), which authorized courts to award costs of litigation whenever they determined that such award was appropriate. In the underlying litigation, movants intervened on behalf of petitioners who were challenging EPA rules regulating mercury emissions from power plants. The court vacated the mercury rules and agreed with petitioners that the rules violated the Act. Movants subsequently sought the court to order the EPA to pay their fees and costs. The court concluded that movants merited a fee award because they contributed to the proper implementation and administration of the Act or otherwise served the public interest. The court declined, however, to weigh in on the appropriate amount. Instead, the court directed the parties to its Appellate Mediation Program. View "State of New Jersey, et al. v. EPA" on Justia Law

The Corps issued a generic nationwide permit (NWP 46), pursuant to its authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. 1344(e), allowing persons to secure approval for qualifying discharges into "waters of the United States" without going through the more laborious process of securing an individual permit. NAHB appealed from the district court's dismissal of its challenge to the Corps' authority to issue the permit. The district court held that the NAHB had standing to pursue its claim but ultimately granted summary judgment for the Corps on the merits. The court held that because NAHB lacked standing to bring suit, the court vacated and remanded with instructions to dismiss the case. View "Natl Assoc. of Home Builders v. US Army Corps of Engineers, et al." on Justia Law

Appellants appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit challenging the determination by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA (collectively, Agencies) that two reaches of the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona constituted traditional navigable waters (TNW) so as to come within the Agencies' regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. 1311(a), 1362(12). Appellants challenged the TNW determination as both procedurally and substantively defective. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the ground that the CWA precluded a pre-enforcement challenge to a TNW determination. The court affirmed the dismissal on the alternative jurisdictional ground that appellants lacked Article III standing. View "Natl' Assoc. of Home Builders, et al. v. EPA, et al." on Justia Law

This case stemmed from the EPA's enactment of twin rules in 2010, pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA), setting emissions standards for portland cement facilities - one under a section called National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), 42 U.S.C. 7412(a)(4), the second under a section called New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), 42 U.S.C. 7411. PCA aruged that both rules violated the CAA and were arbitrary and capricious. Environmental Petitioners filed their own petition, arguing that the EPA abused its discretion by declining to include greenhouse gas emissions standards in its NSPS rule. The court agreed that the EPA acted arbitrarily when it promulgated the final NESHAP rule and therefore granted PCA's petition for review with respect to the EPA's denial of reconsideration on that issue. The court also stayed the NESHAP standards for clinker storage piles pending reconsideration by the EPA. The court denied PCA's petitions with respect to all other issues relating to NESHAP and NSPS, and dismissed Environmental Petitioners' petition for lack of jurisdiction. View "Portland Cement Assoc. v. EPA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, three environmental groups, brought suit in district court to challenge issuance of a permit authorizing the discharge of dredge and fill material into specified wetlands outside Tampa, Florida. Plaintiffs invoked three statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4332(C), the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. 1311(a), 1362(7), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. 1536(a)(2). The district court issued a decision finding that defendants had not fully complied with its obligations under NEPA and the CWA, but rejected plaintiffs' ESA claim, granting summary judgment for plaintiffs on the first two claims and for defendants on the third. The court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded, concluding that defendants did satisfy the demands of the three relevant statutes, except for failing to respond, in its treatment of the NEPA and ESA requirements, to a material contention as to the project's impact on an endangered species, the eastern indigo snake. View "Sierra Club, et al. v. Antwerp, et al." on Justia Law

Three environmental organizations petitioned for review of the EPA's promulgation of a final rule where the "conformity determinations" referred to in the rule's title were approvals needed under the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7506(c)(1), for federally funded transportation projects in an area that was designated "nonattainment" or "maintenance" with respect to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Petitioners principally argued that the 2010 Rule still failed to embody subsection (B)(iii)'s requirements that the project not "delay timely attainment on any standard or any required interim emission reduction or milestones in any area." The court held that, given the EPA's clarification that (B)(iii) applied to local projects and its persuasive explanation of how the substance of the "delay" condition was met, the court was satisfied that the 2010 Rule was not arbitrary, capricious, or inconsistent with law for the reasons raised in Environmental Defense, Inc. v. EPA. In particular, it was clear that a project giving rise to the "counterbalance" hypothetical the court described in Environmental Defense would not be deemed conforming. Accordingly, the petition was denied.

Petitioners challenged the FAA's issuance of 130 Determinations of No Hazard for each of the proposed wind turbines in the area of Nantucket Sound. Petitioners argued that the FAA violated its governing statute, misread its own regulations, and arbitrarily and capriciously failed to calculate the dangers posed to local aviation. The FAA claimed that petitioners lacked standing to challenge the FAA's determinations and that their merits claims were faulty. The court found that petitioners had standing and that the FAA misread its regulations, leaving the challenged determinations inadequately justified. Accordingly, the petitions for review were granted and the FAA's determinations were vacated and remanded.

Appellants challenged a plan to manage the elk and bison populations in the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park pursuant to the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act (Improvement Act), 15 U.S.C. 668dd-668ee. At issue was whether the plan's failure to commit to a deadline for ending supplemental feeding was arbitrary and capricious under the Improvement Act. Also at issue was whether the plan unlawfully gave the Wyoming Fish and Game Department a veto over whether supplemental feeding would end. The court held that the record amply demonstrated that the agencies collected the relevant data, identified the dangers posed by supplemental feeding, and adopted a plan to mitigate those dangers. They also determined that the many objectives of the Improvement Act, including conservation, would be best met without implementation of a fixed deadline for stopping supplemental feeding was not arbitrary or capricious. The court took the Secretary at his word that Wyoming had no veto over the Secretary's duty to end a practice that was concededly at odds with the long-term health of the elk and bison in the refuge. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Trade associations representing commercial ship owners and operators petitioned for review of a nationwide permit issued by the EPA for the discharge of pollutants incidental to the normal operation of vessels. Petitioners raised a number of procedural challenges, all related to the EPA's decision to incorporate into the permit conditions that states submitted to protect their own water quality. The court held that because petitioners had failed to establish that the EPA could alter or reject state certification conditions, the additional agency procedures they demanded would not have afforded them the relief they sought. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review.

This case concerned the San Diego fairy shrimp, an aquatic animal found in southern California, that was designated as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. 1533. Plaintiffs, companies that owned land along the California-Mexico border, sued to challenge the designation of 143 acres of their property as critical habitat for the San Diego fairy shrimp. The court held that because the Fish and Wildlife Services had not reasonably explained how one isolated observation, involving a single 2001 sighting of four ant-sized San Diego fairy shrimp on the property at issue, demonstrated that plaintiffs' property was "occupied" by the San Diego fairy shrimp in 1997 (the relevant statutory date), the court reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded. On remand, the court ordered the district court to vacate the designation of plaintiffs' property as critical habitat for the San Diego fairy shrimp.