Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) appellate decisions are often complex and difficult to read tomes, filled with multiple United States Code sections and acronyms. On May 4, 2009, the United States Supreme Court...

If you practice real estate law, you need to become conversant with Green Building Law. Maybe your clients not have yet become exposed to green building provisions in contracts or green building governmental regulations or incentives, but they soon will be....

In his acceptance speech in Grant Park Tuesday night, President-elect Obama spoke of a “planet in peril.” As a candidate, he promised to combat global warming and to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. Obama tied energy issues...

Energy law is very complex and regulated. Attorneys involved in energy and natural resources law help clients comply with regulatory requirements. Their practice emphasizes rate regulation, licensing and citing of energy facilities, development of energy...

Just starting out in the Environmental Law field? A basic knowledge of the terms of art is key to impressing your client or managing partner with your ability to handle Environmental Law matters competently. Read on for a quick primer!   ...

Some environmental statutes promote the cleanup of past abuses of the environment. At the federal level, the most prominent such law is the Superfund ("CERCLA") program, which establishes a system for designating the most contaminated sites and...

Environmental permitting programs regulate activities deemed to have potentially harmful effects on the physical environment in which we live. For example, federal and state statutes require permits for discharges to the air from industrial smokestacks, liquid...

Wetlands issues continue to be a major focus of environmental debate and discussion. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are working on guidance for interpreting the rather...

Risk assessment has become increasingly recognized as an effective and essential tool for supporting decisions in the remediation of sites in the United States during the past 15 years. Beginning in the 1980s, risk assessment was applied to the remediation...

Spurred by the environmental movement of the 1960s, Congress began to address environmental protection by enacting numerous statutes in the early 1970s. Most of these statutes are implemented through extensive administrative regulations at the federal or...

A nuisance is a use of property that causes injury to others. A private nuisance is an unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of property of another, usually an adjoining landowner, while a  public nuisance is one that may cause a broader,...

CERCLA was passed in 1980 at the end of the ninety-sixth Congress to clean up leaking, inactive or abandoned sites and provide emergency response to spills. CERCLA is the abbreviation for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability...

Over the years, environmental pollution has spawned a great deal of public and private litigation and related governmental investigations. One type of claim, however, has seen little contemporary litigation: claims for natural resource damages ("NRD")....

The maturity of the Clean Water Act ("CWA"), 33 U.S.C.S. §§ 1361 et seq., provides a convenient device to gain insight into environmental enforcement. The relative ease of enforcement due to the self monitoring and reporting requirements,...

This paper discusses both the clean up process and the clean up standards and methods under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, 42 U.S.C. § 9601 et seq. ("CERCLA"). There have been significant changes...

Environmental litigation frequently involves litigation with the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal regulatory agencies and their state counterparts. This form of litigation is seldom "plenary," and because it most often involves...

On June 19th in the Rapanos v. U.S. decision, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded for further proceedings two Sixth Circuit opinions holding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had jurisdiction over wetlands adjacent to a tributary of traditional...

The plaintiffs in environmental litigation often face a maze of procedural dead-ends which they must avoid to get to a hearing on the substance of their case. Of principal concern are those doctrines which may require dismissal in even the most meritorious...

On November 1, 2005, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“U.S. EPA”) issued a Final Rule entitled “Standards and Practices for All Appropriate Inquiries,” that became effective November 1, 2006. The U.S. EPA has for...