Making Challenges to an Impaired Waters Listing Stick

This article is reprinted with the permission of Law360, where it originally appeared on July 30, 2014, under the title “Arguing Injury Can Prevent Harm From EPA Water Listing.” The listing of a water body as impaired under the Clean … Continue reading

Do water transfers require NPDES permits? The debate continues.

Whether or not a discharge qualifies as a “discharge of a pollutant” determines whether or not it is regulated under the Clean Water Act, which has significant consequences for the person discharging.  Section 301 of the Act broadly prohibits “the discharge … Continue reading

Removing all doubt: District Court interprets the phrase “discharges composed entirely of storm water”

Under the Clean Water Act and its implementing regulations, certain “discharges composed entirely of storm water,” including stormwater discharges associated with specified small construction activities and oil and gas and mining operations, do not require NPDES permits.  In order to qualify … Continue reading

Ninth Circuit touches novel CWA and RCRA claims with a forty-foot pole

Last month, an environmental organization testing the bounds of the reach of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) ran into a brick wall wooden pole when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the … Continue reading