Articles Posted in Environmental

Planning and constructing new power plants that will employ new technologies, especially those substantially funded by the federal government, can be a challenging business. Whenever a new law, regulation or agency process goes into effect, industry and legal observers await the often inevitable legal challenges that will arise. For obvious reasons, the exact parameters of any new regulatory program can be of material interest to anyone who makes a living in or near an affected industry. A case in point is the effort to build plants that will rely on carbon sequestration technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions  generated by these facilities. Both the U.S. Department of Energy and EPA have developed plans and procedures to assist this development, which relies on environmental permits that often generate local opposition. And, thus, when the first Safe Drinking Water Act permits were issued in 2014, the legal challenge that followed was noteworthy. Unfortunately, observers will have to wait a while longer on that count, as this particular permit challenge has vanished in a puff of moot.

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Good news for those who respond to and engage in oil spill clean up efforts. In a ruling released on February 16, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, in In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, dismissed, with prejudice, the “B3 Claims Against the Clean-Up Responder Defendants” engaged by the federal government to respond to and clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Thousands of claims were filed on behalf of boat captains and crew, workers involved in decontaminating vessels, clean-up workers and beach personnel involved in on-shore clean-ups, and residents who live and work in close proximity to coastal waters or who otherwise allege they were exposed to oil and/or dispersants. The defendants, and the manufacturer of the dispersants used, moved to dismiss the claims asserted, arguing, among other things, that they are entitled to derivative immunity under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1321(j)(8) (CWA), entitled to discretionary function immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) (FTCA), and that plaintiffs’ claims are preempted as a matter of law. The District Court ruled in the defendants’ favor under each theory.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in In re: United States Department of Defense and United States Environmental Protection Agency Final Rule:  Clean Water Rule: Definition of “Waters of the United States,” 80 Fed. Reg. 37,050 (June 29, 2015), in a split opinion, confirmed that it has jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act to hear challenges to the new rule promulgated by the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers re-defining  the regulatory definition of “Waters of the United States.” Recall that the Sixth Circuit earlier issued a nationwide stay of the implementation of the new rule, pending its determination that it has jurisdiction to hear challenges to this new rule. The regulatory definition of “Waters of the United States” is fundamental to the regulatory operation of  the CWA and those required to obtain a CWA permit will be watching the Sixth Circuit carefully.

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The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), first enacted more than 40 years ago, governs the release of information to the public of data generated by and submitted to the federal government. A recent decision by a U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Office of Science and Technology Policy, describes one of the most important exceptions that serves to restrict the release if internal government documents, the “deliberative process privilege.”The District Court discussed this exemption in connection with its review of the Information Quality Act (IQA) and statements made in a short White House video on global warming director of the OSTP appeared in a brief White House video in which the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) asserted that there was a growing body of evidence linking the weather phenomenon known as the “Polar Vortex” to global warming. The District Court held that 47 pages of internal communications (mostly drafts) that preceded the issuance of a three page letter by the OSTP responding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) concerns about the video were covered by this FOIA deliberative process privilege exemption.

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On February 8, 2016, two significant decisions regarding the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) were issued by the federal courts in the wake of the Supreme Court’s guidance in U.S. v. Kwai Fun Wong,135 S. Ct. 1625, 1638 (2015), that “the FTCA’s time bars are nonjurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling.”  These two recent decisions, Garling, et al., v. U.S. and Trinity Marine Products, Inc. v. United States, leave open the question regarding when equitable tolling of an FTCA claim will be available and, moreover, it may depend upon the jurisdiction in which the claims are filed.

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In the case of Center for Biological Diversity, et. al v. U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion released on January 12, 2016, reversed the lower court’s dismissal of a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Citizens Suit filed against the U.S. Forest Service which alleged that the U.S. Forest Service violated the RCRA by failing to regulate the disposal of spent lead ammunition in a national forest. Reviewing the allegations in the complaint, the Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs had established standing—their claims are “not wholly insubstantial or frivolous.” The Court of Appeals noted that the government could make the argument in the lower court that the U.S. Forest Service was not a “contributor” to the solid waste problem, something the RCRA Citizen Suit provision requires.

Photo:  ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser, Painty Legs – Creative Commons