The U.S. Court of Appeals for the T
hird Circuit, in Group Against Smog and Pollution v. Shenango, Incorporated, affirmed the dismissal of a Clean Air Act (CAA) Citizen Suit where state regulators were engaging in an ongoing action against Shenango when GASP’s complaint was filed, and where the federal court had retained jurisdiction over a Consent Decree that had been issued. Continue Reading ›
In United States v. Tonawanda Coke Corp., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in an unpublished opinion released on January 11, 2016, rejected Tonawanda’s appeal of the lower court’s judgment adjudicating it guilty of criminal offenses under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and requiring Tonawanda to fund two studies, at a cost of $12.2 million to investigate the effects of its conduct. On appeal, the Court of Appeals considered Tonawanda’s two arguments. First, Tonawanda argued that its RCRA conviction should be set aside because it did not have fair notice that its conduct was illegal and, second, that the prosecution should be barred because the relevant five-year statute of limitations had expired. The Court of Appeals dismissed the first argument, holding that Tonawanda’s counsel had not preserved this issue at trial. Regarding the second issue, the crime for which Tonawanda was convicted was the illegal storage of hazardous waste. The Court of Appeals found it was a “continuing offense” for which the “limitations clock” did not begin until December 2009, when, presumably, the illegal storage ceased. As stated by the Court of Appeals, “Congress, in enacting RCRA, employed language indicating that it understood [illegal] storage to be a continuing offense.”
In the home stretch for 2015, Courts across the nation issued environmental decisions of note:
U.S. Supreme Court
Oral argument in the case of FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association 
was held in October of 2015, and a decision may be announced shortly. The controversy involves complex provisions in the Federal Power Act (FPA) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority under the law to regulate the practices of wholesale electricity markets, which have traditionally been considered to be reserved for state regulation. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against FERC, setting the stage for this appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of the limits placed on federal regulatory authority that were discussed in the recent decision of the Court in Michigan, et al., v. EPA figure prominently in the briefs filed with the Court. Continue Reading ›
On December 29, 2105, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling that may be of considerable interest to oil and gas operators in Pennsylvania. In EQT Production Company v. Department of Environmental Protection of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Court considered the “whether a company threatened by an administrative agency with ongoing, multi-million-dollar
penalties per such agency’s interpretation of a statutory regime has the right, immediately, to seek a judicial declaration that the agency’s interpretation is erroneous.” Answering the question in the affirmative, the Court held that “the impact of the Department’s threat of multi-million dollar assessments against EPC was sufficiently direct, immediate, and substantial to create a case or controversy justifying pre-enforcement judicial review via a declaratory judgment proceeding, and that exhaustion of administrative remedies relative to the issues of statutory interpretation that the company has presented was unnecessary.” The Court also confirmed that very large civil penalty assessments may be subject to pre-enforcement judicial review in Pennsylvania state courts and that the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (PEHB) may not have exclusive jurisdiction to review these proposed penalties.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has distinguished decisions from the Fifth and Tenth Circuit that appear, at first blush, to be in conflict with its ruling that the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act, 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b) (ICCTA), preempts state law negligence claims. In the case of Tubbs, et al., v. Surface Transportation Board, et al., decided on December 28, 2015,
the Court of Appeals denied a petition to review an administrative decision of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) in which the STB held that the ICCTA, preempts the plaintiffs’ state-tort law claims against the BNSF Railway Company for damage caused by the flooding resulting from the railroad’s maintenance of an earthen embankment that bisects the Tubbses’ their property on which BNSF operates a railroad track. There appears to be room for further development of the Court of Appeals’ thinking on this topic.
In U.S. Repeals Longstanding Ban on Export of Crude Oil, my Pillsbury colleagues Dan LeFort, Paul Marston, Tom Campbell and I discuss the President’s recent signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, an Act that funds the Federal government through fiscal year 2016, and its repeal of the 40-year ban on the export of crude oil.
Addition Source: Lifting of 40-Year Statutory Crude Oil Export Ban Signed into Law; Environmental and Regulatory Provisions in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2016
The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2822) is divided into several divisions, reflecting separate appropriations acts. A cursory reading of this massive legislation discloses a few environmental and regulatory provisions of interest:
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declined to entertain EPA’s argument that it could dictate venue for review of its decision by including within the decision that it would have “nationwide scope or effect.” Pursuant to Section 307(b)(1) of the CAA, venue over challenges to EPA actions lie exclusively with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia only if (1) the final action taken by EPA is “nationally applicable” or (2) EPA found that its final action was based on a determination of “nationwide scope or effect” and it published this finding. Ultimately, the Court of Appeals, in Dalton Trucking, Inc., et al., v. EPA, et al., held that venue was not proper in the District of Columbia and dismissed the petitions for review of EPA’s authorization of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations.
In their alert “Reverse CEQA” Reversed, California Supreme Court Rejects CEQA Analysis of Impacts of the Environment on the Project, Pillsbury attorney David Farabee discusses the California Supreme Court’s recent rejection of a requirement of so-called “reverse CEQA” analysis, concluding that “CEQA does not generally require an agency to consider the effects of existing environmental conditions on a proposed project’s future users or residents.” The case is California Building Industry Association v. Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Case No. S213478 (December 17, 2015).
For several years, EPA has encouraged the regulated community to audit their facilities for compliance with environmental laws, and to self-disclose to EPA any violations noted in the audit to obtain reductions to or even eliminate altogether civil penalties if the report is made on a timely basis and demonstrates that the violations are being corrected promptly. 
These policies were announced in April 2000 with a special policy made available to small businesses (the Small Business Compliance Policy). In 2008, the benefits of the policy were extended to new owners to encourage them to undertake an environmental audit of the facilities they were purchasing to address and correct existing environmental violations and to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the Audit Policy to embark upon a “fresh start” with EPA. The result of these polices was to dramatically expand the scope of environmental auditing, which, EPA has concluded, resulted in
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