Environmental Law Commons^™

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition V. Fola Coal Company, Llc, Emily A. Slike

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Disregarding CWA regulations, WVDEP allowed for a state coal mining company, Fola, to discharge pollutants into the Stillhouse Branch without regard for water quality violations. Fola claimed that because it held a WV/NPDES permit, it was shielded from any liability so long as the company followed the permit’s provisions, even if its discharge violated CWA water quality standards.

Hawkes Co. V. United States Army Corps Of Engineers, Sarah M. Danno

Public Land & Resources Law Review

A peat mining company will not be required to obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act to discharge dredged and fill material into wetlands. The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota held that the United States Army Corps of Engineers fell short in its attempts to establish jurisdiction over the wetlands by twice failing to show a significant nexus existed between the wetlands and navigable waters. Further, the district court enjoined the Corps from asserting jurisdiction a third time because it would force the mining company through a “never ending loop” of administrative law.

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit addressed, for the second time, whether the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) acted arbitrarily when it issued Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP 21), which authorizes dredge and fill activities by surface mining operations and applies differing standards to grandfathered operations and new operations. The court held that the Corps did not, and it upheld the permit. Also, the Eleventh Circuit held that the National Park Service did not act improperly under the Wilderness Act when it reduced the number of acres it considered to be eligible for designation as …

Little Streams And Legal Transformations, Dave Owen

Utah Law Review

In 1972, Congress passed a statute whose text offered sweeping protection for waterways across the nation. In theory, those protections extended to little streams. Actual practices were different, not just in the 1970s but also well into the 1990s. But over the past twenty years, small streams have become a central focus of regulatory protection, with the extent and type of those protections continuing to evolve to this day, and with additional changes still possible. The future of that evolution is uncertain, and it may hang in the balance; Congress, the incoming administration, or the courts could nip much of …

United States Army Corps Of Engineers V. Hawkes Co., Jonah Brown

Public Land & Resources Law Review

When landowners seek to determine if a permit is required from the Army Corps of Engineers to discharge dredged or fill material into waters within their property boundaries, they may first obtain a jurisdictional determination specifying whether “waters of the United States” are present. In an 8-0 judgment, Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes was a victory for landowners, concluding that an approved jurisdictional determination is a final agency action reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Environmental Justice And Community-Based Reparations, Catherine Millas Kaiman

Seattle University Law Review

This Article seeks to illuminate the lack of adequate legal remedies that are available for low-income, predominantly minority communities that have suffered historic environmental injustices. The Article not only discusses the lack of adequate legal remedies, but also proposes the use of local, state, and federal reparations programs for communities that have previously suffered environmental injustices; are still living with the effects of environmental injustices, by way of disease, air, soil, and water pollution; or are suffering current and ongoing environmental injustices. As has been recently illustrated by Michigan’s state action of providing lead-contaminated water for over a year to …

Troubled Water: An Examination Of The Npdes Permit Shield, Stephanie Rich

Pace Environmental Law Review

In this comment I argue for a narrow interpretation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) permit shield by analyzing the recent federal cases addressing the shield’s scope. A narrow interpretation calls for a greater level of compliance and disclosure on behalf of the permit holder in order to invoke the shield’s protection. This argument also includes a higher standard of “reasonable contemplation” of pollutants on the part of the regulator. The first section of this comment gives a brief background of the CWA, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), and the permit shield provision. The next section presents the …

Drinking Water Protection And Agricultural Exceptionalism, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Providing safe drinking water is a basic responsibility of government. In the United States, local water utilities shoulder much of this burden, but federal drinking water law sets these utilities up to fail. The primary problem arises in the context of nonpoint source pollution, where federal drinking water law favors end-of-line clean up by water utilities over pollution prevention by farmers and other nonpoint source polluters. This system is both inefficient and unfair.

Although the Safe Drinking Water Act requires local utilities to provide safe water, it gives them few tools to engage in water pollution prevention and instead emphasizes …

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided novel issues in two cases under the Clean Water Act (CWA). In Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Inc. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the court held remand of a Corps of Engineers permitting decision for reconsideration without also vacating the permit is a remedy within the court's discretion and was appropriate under the circumstances. In Riverkeeper v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the court held appellate review of a non-final response by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a petition to withdraw Alabama's authority to administer the National Pollution …

Plain Meaning, Precedent, And Metaphysics: Lessons In Statutory Interpretation From Analyzing The Elements Of The Clean Water Act Offense, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article, the fifth in a series of five, completes the author’s detailed analysis of how federal courts have interpreted each element of the Clean Water Act (CWA) offense. Compiling statistics across the four prior articles, it draws conclusions about statutory interpretation in general, finding that the depth of legal analysis increases with the level of court; that environmentally positive results decrease with the level of court; that courts use only a small number of canons and other interpretive devices; that their uses of interpretive devices change over time; and that interpretive devices are not all outcome-neutral. The author also …

Criminal Ambiguity: Redefining The Clean Water Act’S Mens Rea Requirements, Bobby Yu

Seton Hall Circuit Review

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, addressing an issue of first impression, rejected the district court's use of a Lone Pine case-management order as a means of testing the sufficiency of the plaintiffs' pleadings in a state law environmental torts case. The court also interpreted Florida law to mean that plaintiffs are not required to allege that groundwater contamination exceeded regulatory maximum contaminant levels for drinking water to maintain their claims and that they could recover "stigma" damages to their property without alleging actual contamination. The United States District Court for the Middle District …

Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Recent federal and state court decisions have made clear that federal common law claims against emitters of greenhouse gases are not sustainable; however, those same courts seem to have given state common law tort claims the green light, at least if the claims are brought in the state where the polluters are located. This Note contends that such suits are not an adequate remedy for those injured by climate change because they will face nearly insurmountable barriers in state court, and because there are major policy-level drawbacks to relying on state tort law rather than a federal solution. This Note …

Scale Economies, Scale Externalities: Hog Farming And The Changing American Agricultural Industry, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

American agriculture is inexorably concentrating into the hands of a small number of large conglomerates. Expanding farms pursuing scale economies would normally have to abide by a system of environmental and other laws that would, in theory, require farms to account for negative externalities. If those laws were observed and enforced, they would help strike a balance between the greater profitability and the larger externalities of scaling up. But these laws are not widely observed nor rigorously enforced, which upsets this balance and gives large-scale farms a cost advantage while insulating them from corresponding responsibilities.

Perhaps nowhere in agriculture is …

Navigating A Pathway Toward Colorado's Water Future: A Review And Recommendations On Colorado's Draft Water Plan, Lawrence J. Macdonnell, Colorado Water Working Group

Books, Reports, and Studies

40 pages (includes color illustrations).

A Primer: Air And Water Environmental Quality Standards In The United State, Jason J. Czarnezki, Siu Tip Lam, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Plain Meaning, Precedent, And Metaphysics: Interpreting The “Navigable Waters” Element Of The Federal Water Pollution Offense, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article, the third in a series of five, examines the meaning of “navigable waters” under the Clean Water Act. It traces the traditional judicial interpretation of navigable waters and how Congress and EPA attempted to extend its meaning, then examines how the term has been applied in the context of tributaries and wetlands, isolated waters, groundwater, and EPA’s unitary theory of navigable waters. The author then analyzes EPA and the Corps’ 2014 proposed amendments to the definition of “waters of the United States,” and concludes that those amendments may resolve much of the interpretive crisis.

Legal Tools For Climate Adaptation Advocacy: Clean Water Act Permitting And Funding Programs, Channing R. Jones

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Climate change imperils the quality of water resources and aquatic ecosystems by introducing or exacerbating supply challenges and pollution threats. Existing legal frameworks, including permitting and grant programs, can incorporate climate change adaptation into the way we protect water. In particular, the Clean Water Act – the primary tool used nationwide to protect surface waters from pollutant discharges and fill activity – can be used to promote climate change adaptation in a number of ways.

The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972 and amended in 1977 and 1987. The statute is principally administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, …

An Analysis Of Senator Mcconnell's Letter Urging States Not To Comply With Epa's Clean Power Plan, Daniel Selmi

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

On numerous occasions Senator Mitchell McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has attacked the upcoming Clean Power Plan regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is scheduled to issue in June of this year. Most notably, on March 19, 2015, he sent a letter to the National Governors Association urging the governors of all fifty states not to prepare state plans in response to those regulations. In that letter he laid out what he termed his “serious legal and policy concerns” regarding the EPA proposal. The letter received wide publicity.

Daniel Selmi has written an essay analyzing legal statements made by …

Plain Meaning, Precedent, And Metaphysics: Interpreting The “Point Source” Element Of The Clean Water Act Offense, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article, the fourth in a series of five, examines the continuing struggles to define “point source” and “nonpoint source” under the Clean Water Act. State regulation of nonpoint sources is neither pervasive nor robust, and most continuing water pollution problems can be traced primarily to nonpoint sources. EPA should define nonpoint sources by regulation and begin to expand the definition of point source by incorporating established case law and Agency practice to bring more nonpoint sources into the point source definition.

A Primer: Air And Water Environmental Quality Standards In The United States, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article, designed as a resource for environmental law professors both domestically and abroad, addresses how environmental quality standards are created, implemented, and enforced in the United States. The answers to these questions are useful to those teaching U.S. environmental law and international scholars, especially in the European Union, who are faced with the challenge of creating new environmental quality standards under both national and EU directives. It must be noted that this project is complicated by the federal system within the country, and, thus, attention must be devoted to the federal-state relationship. In fact, the major relevant statutes, the …

Alito's Voice: Koontz And The End Of Justice Steven's Private Private Property Regulation Policy, Colin W. Maguire

Cleveland State Law Review

This article talks about the substantial distinction between a physical government invasion and a coercive request for funds, if the government action fails under Nollan and Dolan. Clearly, there is a newly recognized risk to water resource regulators who try to stop development in areas which are considered wetlands.

Preservation Is A Flawed Mitigation Strategy, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

The objective of the Clean Water Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters. To help achieve that objective, the Clean Water Act limits the ability to dredge or fill a wetland. To do so, one must first obtain a section 404 permit. These permits, which are issued by the Army Corps of Engineers (“Corps”) with coordination and oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), require project proponents to avoid, minimize, and compensate the harms of any wetland destruction or modification. Compensatory mitigation is a troubling concept in wetlands regulation because it …

Clean Water Act, Section 404 Applicants: May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor, Jason Bailey

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alaska County Action On Toxics V. Aurora Energy Services, Llc, Lindsey M. West

Public Land & Resources Law Review

On September 3, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a district court decision that exempted non-stormwater discharges of coal into Alaska’s Resurrection Bay from Clean Water Act liability. The Court of Appeals reasoned that defendants, Aurora Energy Services, LLC and Alaska Railroad Corp., were not shielded from liability under the Clean Water Act because National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System general permits unambiguously prohibit non-stormwater discharges of coal. The general permit lists eleven categories of authorized non-stormwater discharges, none of which include non-stormwater discharges of coal. Thus, the court concluded that the general permit plainly disallowed defendant’s …

The Failure And Future Of Lake Okeechobee Water Releases: A Quasi-Governmental Solution, Jacquelyn A. Thomas

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Slides: Session 2, Water Supply And Quality: The Regulatory Framework, Richard E. Schwartz

Water and Air Quality Issues in Oil and Gas Development: The Evolving Framework of Regulation and Management (Martz Summer Conference, June 5-6)

Presenter: Richard E. Schwartz, Crowell & Moring LLP

38 slides

Maintaining A Healthy Water Supply While Growing A Healthy Food Supply: Legal Tools For Cleaning Up Agricultural Water Pollution, Mary Jane Angelo, Jon Morris

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article will explore a number of legal mechanisms that could play a role in ensuring that discharges from agricultural activities do not cause or contribute to violations of water quality standards. Specifically, this article will evaluate the relative effectiveness of: (1) narrative nutrient criteria as compared with numeric nutrient criteria; (2) Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) implementation through regulatory and non-regulatory mechanisms; and (3) the relative efficacy of design-based standards such as Best Management Practices (BMPs) and performance-based standards in reducing water pollution from agriculture. The article will draw on experiences from the State of Florida, including Everglades' restoration …

Getting To The (Non) Point: Private Governance As A Solution To Nonpoint Source Pollution, Kyle W. Robisch

Vanderbilt Law Review

Chances are that today you have already unwittingly advanced the slow but steady demise of America's freshwater supply. The sausage and egg biscuit you ate for breakfast, the half-empty bottle of Drano you dumped into your backyard, and the quick trip to the grocery store-these seemingly innocent actions each significantly degrade American watersheds.' In response to this systemic and persistent assault on water quality, Congress enacted the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. More commonly known as the Clean Water Act ("CWA"), this legislation attempted to take an aggressive and comprehensive approach to improving water quality. To achieve its …

The Spending Power And Environmental Law After Sebelius, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that portions of the Affordable Care Act exceeded federal authority under the Spending Clause. With that holding, Sebelius became the first Supreme Court decision since the New Deal to limit an act of Congress on spending-power grounds, rounding out the “New Federalism” limits on federal power first initiated by the Rehnquist Court in the 1990s. The new Sebelius doctrine constrains the federal spending power in contexts involving changes to ongoing intergovernmental partnerships with very large federal grants. However, the decision gives little direction for …