Articles Posted in Environmental

A significant CERCLA Opinion and Order was issued on March 18, 2015 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in Northern States Power Company v. The City of Ashland, Wisconsin, et al. Northern States is cleaning up a CERCLA site located adjacent to Lake Superior in Ashland, Wisconsin pursuant to agreements it had entered into with EPA in 2003 and 2012, and it has filed cost recovery lawsuits against the defendants, including Ashland County. Northern States alleges that Ashland County was a former owner of the facility many years ago, and that it was vested with sufficient ownership and control as the result of a tax delinquency. Contemporary newspaper accounts confirmed, for the Court, that the County appears to have played a direct role in the demolition of onsite facilities and the resulting historic releases of hazardous substances, and the County’s request for summary judgment was denied.

Last week, the State of Wyoming filed a Petition for Review of Final Agency Action in the Wyoming Federal District Court challenging the new federal hydraulic fracturing rules, 43 C.F.R. Part 3160. The case is State of Wyoming v. United States Department of the Interior, et al., No. 15cv43-S. Wyoming essentially argues that the Department of Interior’s new rules exceed the Department of Interior’s authority under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, 43 U.S.C. §§ 1701-84 and the Mineral Leasing Act, 30 U.S.C. §§ 181-287; that exclusive federal authority is vested in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Underground Injection Control program established under the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. § 300h-1; and that the rules unlawfully interfere with the State of Wyoming’s hydraulic fracturing regulations.

Petitions for certiorari have been filed with the Supreme Court of the United States regarding two recent rulings of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In both Aransas Project v. Shaw and In re: Deepwater Horizon, petitions for en banc review were denied, but a significant number of dissents have encouraged the petitioners to seek further review in the Supreme Court.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals are encountering and deciding CERCLA (or Superfund) “Arranger Liability” cases in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in the case of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. United States, 556 U. S. 559 (2009). Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit held, in the case of Vine Street LLC v. Borg Warner Corp., that CERCLA’s “Arranger Liability” for Superfund cleanup responsibility did not apply to most straightforward business transactions in which an intent to dispose of hazardous waste or hazardous substances in the guise of a business transaction could not be established. On March 20, 2015,a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit reached a similar conclusion in the case of Consolidation Coal Company v. Georgia Power Company, et al. The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling that granted summary judgment to Georgia Power Company in a cost recovery case involving the ongoing cleanup of the Ward Transformer Site, located in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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On March 13, 2015, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) issued an important ruling in a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) enforcement matter. The case is In re: Elementis Chromium, Inc., TSCA Appeal 13-03.
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In the case of Center for Sustainable Economy v. Sally Jewell and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, decided on March 6, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the Center’s petition to review the Department of Interior’s (“DOI”) latest proposed leasing program. Section 18 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires the Department to balance competing economic, social and environmental values in determining when and where to make offshore leases in federal waters available. According to the Center, the DOI’s actions fell short of complying with the law’s mandate and, in particular, some of the economic analysis.
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Wetlands mitigation banking agreements are subject to the rules of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps); they can serve a useful public purpose by assisting with the restoration and preservation of waterways subject to the Clean Water Act.
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Readers may find helpful this recapitulation of recently-decided environmental law cases by the federal and state courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has issued two important rulings, and the court will be deciding important administrative law and Clean Air Act cases before the current term ends in June.

1. FEDERAL COURTS
A. Supreme Court

Kansas and Nebraska share the waters of the Republican River that flow through their states, as well as Colorado. Their disputes resulted in the Republican River Compact, which the states agreed to in 1943 to fairly allocate the water resources of the Republican River; the Compact was approved by the Congress in appropriate legislation. In 1998, Kansas and Nebraska argued over Nebraska’s increased pumping of groundwater, which resulted from the construction of thousands of wells hydraulically connected to the Republican River and its tributaries. A Special Master was appointed to sort out these complaints, and a settlement was signed in 2002 which included new procedures to promote compliance with the Compact. After the experience of some lingering droughts, Kansas complained that Nebraska was exceeding its authorized allocation of water. Another Special Master was appointed, who determined that Nebraska had knowingly failed to comply with the Compact in consuming excessive amounts of Republican River water, and the Master awarded Kansas $3.7 million for its loss and an additional sum of $1.8 million against Nebraska as a “partial disgorgement”. Both parties filed exceptions to the Special Master’s report, which the Supreme Court approved in the latest Kansas v. Nebraska decision, decided February 24, 2015.
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Today, in a narrow 5 to 4 decision, the United States Supreme Court reversed the opinion of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals which had affirmed the felony conviction of John Yates, a commercial fisherman, who was suspected of having caught undersized red grouper in federal waters off the coast of Florida and convicted for concealing evidence of a violation of the federal conservation laws. This is an important ruling affecting the enforcement of the federal conservation laws and interpreting the scope of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which was enacted in the wake of the Enron collapse and the destruction of financial documents that abetted its demise. The case is Yates v. United States, decided February 25, 2014.
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