Currently browsing: Litigation

The Public Power Council has announced the Alliance of Western Energy Consumers will file a petition for review and join PPC’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenges of the Bonneville Power Administration’s decision to enter into a U.S. Government agreement and Memorandum of Understanding on Columbia River salmon recovery that commits BPA to various obligations.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a legal petition this week with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the wonder caddisfly under the Endangered Species Act.

Federal agencies, states and tribes say a five-year or more pause in U.S. District Court litigation over Columbia River basin salmon recovery will harm none of the parties that objected to the “stay” in December. Instead, they say in a Jan. 12 filing, a stay will allow the region to focus on “important partnership efforts … to benefit the fish, wildlife, diverse habitat, and Native American communities in the Northwest.”

Most parties in the litigation challenging NOAA Fisheries 2020 biological opinion of the Columbia/Snake river federal hydroelectric system asked an Oregon U.S. District Court last week to extend a stay that has been in effect since 2021. The 60-day pause would allow the litigants –fisheries advocates, states, tribes and federal agencies – to continue to hammer out a lasting agreement on how to operate a hydro system while recovering threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum Thursday announced a historic $698 million dollar settlement with the Monsanto Company for its role in polluting Oregon with PCBs for the past 90 years. 

In a swift response to a motion filed last week by most parties currently embroiled in a case that challenges the new federal environmental impact statement and biological opinion for Columbia/Snake river salmon and steelhead,U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon approved Tuesday a stay on all litigation activities until July 31, 2022.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding a guidance document entitled “Applying the Supreme Court’s County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund Decision in the Clean Water Act Section 402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit Program” that was issued by the Trump administration in January, 2021. With this action, EPA says it is preserving longstanding clean water protections.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was sued in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week for what the lawsuit alleges is a failure to respond to a petition seeking to remove Washington State’s authority to issue discharge permits under the Clean Water Act.  The 2017 petition took aim at permits issued by the Washington Department of Ecology for sewage treatment plants that discharge nitrogen to Puget Sound without the required permit limits.

The development of water pollution clean-up plans in Oregon has been at a complete standstill for over a decade, while the number of its waters with unsafe levels of pollution increases, alleges a lawsuit filed this week against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington last week approved the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to reevaluate the Trump administration’s rollback of Washington state water quality standards developed to protect people from toxic pollution.

The Washington State Pollution Control Hearings Board this week announced it intends to reject the Army Corps of Engineers’ challenge to the state’s Clean Water Act certifications requiring temperature limits for Columbia/Snake River dams and reservoirs to protect salmon and steelhead.

The eighth battle of the BiOp has been underway in federal court since mid-January and two groups are joining in on the debate, one to join as an intervenor plaintiff and one to throw the entire lawsuit out.

Conservation groups have filed the opening complaint against the Columbia River System Operations 2020 Environmental Impact Statement and Biological Opinion for salmon and steelhead, kicking off yet another round of litigation over the federal approach to recovering these fish listed under the Endangered Species Act. The opening salvo shows breaching Lower Snake River dams will be a central issue in the coming courtroom battles.

A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has issued a stipulated order requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology to take steps to reduce polluted runoff from land uses such as farming, grazing, logging, and septic systems.

A federal plan to operate the Columbia/Snake River hydropower system without jeopardizing salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act is likely headed to court for the sixth time since 2001.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s top official announced this week the agency will propose lifting protections for wolves throughout the lower 48 states, triggering predictable opposition from environmental groups and continued litigation.

A U.S. District Court in Washington ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to set temperature limits, known as total maximum daily load, in the Snake and Columbia rivers to protect threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

In arguments before U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon, defending parties in a two-year court case that alleges water quality violations by Portland General Electric due to operations at its dams on the lower Deschutes River continued to argue that the case should be dismissed.

One thing is certain: parties agree that a decision whether an injunction to increase spring spill at eight Columbia and Snake river dams this year for juvenile salmon and steelhead is legally and biologically justified now lies with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Montana Supreme Court has ruled that a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes is in compliance with the state Constitution, after a contentious period of resistance to the compact that has carried on for much of the last decade.

Last week, the House Committee on Natural Resources passed five bills to reform the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to withdraw its July 2014 Clean Water Act Proposed Determination that would, if finalized, have imposed restrictions on the discharge of dredged or fill material associated with the potential “Pebble Mine” in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed.

Irrigators have asked federal agencies to review the actions taken in 2015 when water in the Snake River was dangerously warm for juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating downriver, as it also was for endangered adult sockeye salmon attempting to migrate into Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association announced this week their intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its failure to complete an environmental study that would remove gray wolves from the endangered species list in the lower 48 states.

The dispute over alleged clean water violations in the lower 100 miles of the Deschutes River downriver of a complex of two dams is now in two courts.

For more than a decade farmers dependent on northeast Oregon’s Lostine River irrigation diversions agreed to maintain minimum flows of 15 cubic feet per second during critical times for the chinook salmon spawning migration. This year that number is jumping up to 18 cfs.

A Montana District Court judge recently ruled that a portion of the long-contested water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes violates the state constitution, but it is not enough to derail the compact that was narrowly approved by the Montana Legislature in 2015.

Columbia Basin tribes appealed June 5 the U.S. Department of Transportation’s standards for oil tank cars and first responder notification.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed legislation into law on April 24 that will implement a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, despite a lingering lawsuit that sought to prevent him from doing so.

Less than a week after the Montana Legislature passed a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, a group of Flathead Reservation irrigators filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of the Legislature’s actions.

Despite determined efforts to block or amend a controversial water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the compact was passed by the Montana House of Representatives Wednesday.

A water rights compact for Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes is approaching a culmination for its tumultuous trip through the Montana Legislature.

So far, things have been relatively quiet at the Montana Legislature when it comes to a water rights compact for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, but that is likely to change soon.

Opposition to gill netting lake trout on Montana's Flathead Lake, and any state involvement with netting, continues to take shape.

The Endangered Species Act Congressional Working Group, led by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-WA, today released its final Report, Findings and Recommendations http://esaworkinggroup.hastings.house.gov/uploadedfiles/finalreportandrecommendations-113.pdf.

Water quality and the notorious “fish consumption rate” took center stage in Washington and poked its head up in Idaho this week, and continues on hold in Oregon where the nation’s toughest pollution controls took effect in 2011.

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Washington, last week reintroduced bipartisan legislation aimed at allowing Northwest states and tribes to obtain permits for lethal removal of the most aggressive California sea lions in order to deter predation on salmon as they return to the Columbia River to spawn.