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  • Audio file (If file doesn’t begin playing immediately, right-click to download it and then listen) USGS links Assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Bakken and Three Forks Formations, Williston Basin Province, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2013 Input-form data for the U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Devonian and Mississippian Bakken and Devonian Three [...]

  • Other links Pesticide report leaves tough questions unanswered (Defenders of Wildlife) Feds Are Failing to Protect Endangered Species From Pesticides (Center for Biological Diversity) Press release from National Research Council (4/30/2013) Federal Agencies Should Use a Common Approach to Evaluate Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered and Threatened Species WASHINGTON — When determining the potential effects [...]

  • “W.Va. members of Congress promise action against EPA” is the headline in the West Virginia Record, whose article noted that 80 percent of the state’s congressional delegation had posted press releases criticizing the D.C. Circuit’s decision that said EPA had the authority to partially revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine. (Only Jay Rockefeller appears [...]

  • The National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council will release a report next week evaluating the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. Here’s the statement from NAS: Evaluating Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered, Threatened Species – New Report A new report from the National Research Council examines how the U.S. Environmental Protection [...]

  • U.S. District Court Judge Joseph C. Spero dismissed an ESA citizen suit seeking to force consultation under the ESA “regarding the effects of 382 registered pesticides on endangered and threatened species” (Center for Biological Diversity v. EPA, 11-293-JCS, N.D. Cal.). “Plaintiffs have not pled sufficient facts to show that the EPA was required to reinitiate [...]

  • The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision that had scolded EPA for revoking a Clean Water Act permit that already had been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. U.S. EPA, 12-5150, 4/23/13). Wrong, the appeals court said. “[W]e reverse the district court insofar as it [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 19, 2013): Asian elephant shot, loggerhead sea turtle egg snatcher sentenced, DOI budget proposed

    Catching up on the Fish and Wildlife Service: The service’s main page features the following news releases: FWS is investigating the shooting of an Asian elephant traveling with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Tupelo, Miss. “The incident occurred in the early morning of April 9, 2013, outside the Bancorp South Arena,” the [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 17, 2013)

    The American Bird Conservancy is touting a study that concludes feral cats are killing endangered Hawaiian petrels. The proof is in the pictures, ABC said. For the first time, videos were taken showing cats preying on petrels. In one, a feral cat “wait[ed] near the entrance of a burrow for over one hour.  When the [...]

  • Link to the full document The Obama Administration today released its National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, which the service said “provides a roadmap of key steps needed over the next five years to reduce the current and expected impacts of climate change on our natural resources, which include: changing species distributions and [...]

  • Audubon writer Ted Williams suspended, pulled from masthead, for Orlando Sentinel column on feral cats

    Update, 3/25/13: The media are starting to take note of Williams’ suspension. See the article and the list of links below for more coverage of this story. Veteran conservation journalist Ted Williams, who for years has penned the Incite column for Audubon magazine, has been suspended and had his name removed from the publication’s masthead, [...]

Supreme Court grants review of 9th Circuit Clean Water Act decisions

 Posted by on June 25, 2012  Daily Links, EPA, Supreme Court
Jun 252012
 

Two major Ninth Circuit decisions will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, which means that those decisions are almost surely in danger of being overturned.

The cases are Los Angeles County Flood Control Dist. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (11-460) and a pair of consolidated petitions, Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center (11-338) and Georgia-Pacific West Inc. v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center (11-347).

Here I will cut and paste the summary at Legal Planet provided by law professor Richard Frank, Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC-Davis:

Los Angeles County Flood Control Dist. v. Natural Resources Defense Council arises out of a Ninth Circuit decision interpreting the Clean Water Act’s NPDES permit requirements expansively.  In its 2011 opinion, the Court of Appeals ruled that Los Angeles County must obtain permits for urban runoff that collects in channelized river systems maintained and “improved” by county flood control agencies.

Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, No. 11-338, and Georgia-Pacific West, Inc. v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, No. 11-347, are consolidated petitions challenging a controversial 2010 Ninth Circuit decision.  That opinion concluded that channelized stormwater runoff from logging roads that eventually flows into streams and rivers requires an NPDES permit from federal regulators under the Clean Water Act.  In so ruling, the Court of Appeals held that EPA’s so-called silviculture rule does not exempt such logging-related runoff from the Act’s permit requirements.

Frank previewed the cases Thursday. SCOTUSBlog.com has briefs.

In both cases, as noted by Frank, the court sought the opinion of the Solicitor General. A lot of good that did the government: The court rejected the recommendations of the Obama Administration’s top lawyer to deny certiorari of each decision.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here in predicting that the Ninth Circuit’s decision to mandate that logging runoff be regulated as industrial stormwater will not survive its date with the justices this fall.

Incidentally — or perhaps not incidentally — Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself from consideration of the petitions. I assume that means he won’t be participating in oral argument either, but have sent an email to the Public Information Office of the Supreme Court in an attempt to ascertain that information.

My best guess as to why Breyer recused himself — and why he likely would continue to remain “recused” — is that his brother, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer from the Northern District of California, sat by designation on the Ninth Circuit panel that issued the decision.