Articles Posted in Environmental

Thanks in part to the current standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge—and the 2014 armed confrontation in Nevada that preceded it, the contentious issue of grazing rights on federal lands is more front of mind nationally than it’s been in decades.

With the federal government owning and controlling millions of acres of land, particularly in the western states, business activities conducted on federal land are subject to close scrutiny and often require that a relevant permit be obtained and maintained. A failure to possess appropriate federal authorization can result in acrimonious legal action, and as illustrated in U.S. v. Estate of E. Wayne Hage, et al.  On January 15, 2016, the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling (a federal court sitting in Nevada) that the federal government could not prosecute an action for damages or injunctive relief against ranchers who were grazing their cattle on federal land without a federal grazing permit. Continue Reading ›

In an insurance case attracting the attention of many insurance companies, Century Indemnity Company v. Marine Group, LLP, et al., a U.S. Magistrate Judge with the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon (Portland Division), in its opinion and order on Marine Group’s motion for clarification and reconsideration, held that an insurance policy provision which excludes coverage for environmental claims brought by governmental agencies extends to Superfund or CERCLA natural resource damage claims asserted by Indian tribes that are members of a Superfund Trustee Council. The Indian tribes are members of the Portland Harbor Natural Resource Trustee Council, and the Court held that the claims asserted by members of the Council, including the tribes, triggered the insurance exclusion.

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Citizens Suits have played an important role in the enforcement of both the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Clean Air Act (CAA), and all permittees of wastewater discharge permits and air quality permits should be aware of the significance of these Congressionally-approved remedies. While they have broad application to many routine industrial discharges, there also are limited conditions placed on their use. For instance, the CWA Citizen Suit provision, 33 U.S.C. § 1365, requires plaintiffs to provide the alleged violator 60 days’ notice before filing a lawsuit. In addition, the text of the provision of the CWA limits its application to violations of “effluent standards or limitations,” which the CWA also carefully defines by reference to Sections 1311, 1312, 1316. 1317, 1341, and 1342 of the CWA. If the subject matter of the alleged violation is not covered by these provisions, the case will usually be dismissed.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third 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.”

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.

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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.

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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:

• Almost all of these appropriations bills included language specifically forbidding the use of federal funds by the agencies to indirectly lobby the Congress on legislative actions;
• $200,000,000 is appropriated to the Corps of Engineers for the administration of its permitting and regulatory programs regarding navigable waters and wetlands;

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