Yesterday President Biden vetoed the Congressional Review Act resolution that would have repealed EPA's eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act. In 1972 Congress overrode President Nixon's...more
Federal District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and various industry groups challenging EPA's eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the...more
Inside EPA is reporting that the United States Forest Service is going to work with EPA to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit coverage under the Federal Clean Water Act authorizing it to...more
Sam Hess of Inside EPA points out that Judge Brown of Texas concluded that the United States Supreme Court's nearly forty year old precedent compelling the Judiciary to defer to Executive Branch interpretations of laws it is...more
Like I said at the beginning of the month, most of us have seen this sad movie before so it is no surprise that EPA's eighth attempt to define the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act will be the law in no more than 48 of the...more
Law360 is reporting that a Federal District Court Judge in South Carolina is allowing NGOs, including the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, to continue their Clean Water Act citizen suit against the Army Corps of...more
EPA has now opposed the motions of the State of Kentucky and several industry groups to enjoin its eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act. Much of the content of that opposition is not...more
Sir Winston Churchill famously said "those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Of course he didn't have the nearly four decade long controversy over the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act in mind but...more
This week Sam Hess of Inside EPA asked me if I had an opinion as to why there were fewer lawsuits (so far) challenging EPA's eighth attempt to durably determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act than there were...more
This week three Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that a District Court Judge exceeded his authority in vacating an EPA regulation without first determining that the regulation was unlawful.
The Trump...more
Inside EPA reports that some House Democrats are criticizing their Republican colleagues for attempting to repeal EPA's eighth attempt to determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act by regulation. Like recent rules by...more
Everyone expected that EPA's eighth attempt to define the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act would end up in court. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that two groups of plaintiffs filed their lengthy complaints...more
Inside EPA is reporting this morning that a three judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has joined the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in upholding the constitutionality of the Congressional Review Act. The Act...more
Backwards, forwards, square and round. So goes a lyric by the late great Jeff Beck who died this week. Mr. Beck wasn't writing about the decades long war over the jurisdictional reach of the Federal Clean Water Act but the...more
While many of us were focused on the 2022 elections, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Charles River Watershed Association again sued the Environmental Protection Agency because EPA isn't regulating indirect stormwater...more
This week a Federal Judge in Montana threw out a NGO's citizen suit against the Yellowstone Mountain Club for what the NGO claimed were unpermitted discharges of nitrogen to a Water of the United States. I wrote about this...more
This morning the Supreme Court of the United States heard from the Sacketts of Idaho for the second time. For sixteen years the Sacketts have been in the Federal Courts in connection with their attempt to build a house on a...more
Bobby Magill of Bloomberg has published a concise summary of the two hours in the Supreme Court yesterday during which attorneys for the United States of America and the Sacketts of Idaho were grilled on the reach of the...more
As millions in Florida face the wrath of our warming oceans in the guise of Hurricane Ian, Inside EPA is reporting that enough Democrats and Republicans opposed Senator Manchin's proposal to streamline the permitting of...more
Many years ago the Conservation Law Foundation sued the Federal Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to cause EPA to exercise its "residual designation authority" under the Federal Clean Water Act to require permits...more
EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have asked the White House Office of Management and Budget to review its most recent attempt to define "Waters of the United States". That definition determines the reach of the Federal...more
Benjamin Storrow's story in E&E News on the challenges faced by the New England Clean Energy Connect project is worth a read. He reports that it would be the third largest supplier of electricity in New England. ...more
In April of 2020 the Supreme Court of the United States answered a yes or no question with a maybe. The question: does a discharge to groundwater require a permit under the Federal Clean Water Act....more
Ducks Unlimited estimates that the United States has lost approximately 16.8 million acres of wetlands since the mid-1950s. Although the rate of wetland filling has slowed since the passage of the Federal Clean Water Act,...more
For most of my time on this planet, and all of my more than thirty years as an environmental lawyer, the nation's highest court has, with very few exceptions, blessed the United States Environmental Protection Agency's broad...more