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The Clean Water Act puts pollution limits on lakes and streams to protect their uses for drinking water, shellfish, recreation, and fish and wildlife habitat. Lakes and streams are required to meet pollution concentration limits to protect those uses. However, the current standard used by most states only states "concentrations that cause an imbalance in natural flora or fauna" allows states and the polluters to claim that unnatural bacterial growths, wild uncontrolled algae mats or vegetative growths, or the loss of fish is due to other causes. In fact, they are caused by pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus which fertilize the water so that a panoply of undesirable growths take place. The sources of those pollutants are animal waste, effluent from sewage treatment plants, and fertilizer from farms and to a lesser extent from urban areas. Not having a measurable limit makes enforcement of the phosphorus and nitrogen limits almost impossible. The result has been a growing number of toxic algal outbreaks in lakes and dead zones in estuaries and in the Gulf of Mexico. Drinking water sources are threatened, as are important ecosystems. Earthjustice is seeking to force the EPA to create effective water quality standards. |
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The Roan Plateau, just west of Rifle, Colorado, provides an island of near-unrivaled biodiversity in western Colorado. The Roan contains essential habitat for genetically pure populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout; supports Colorado's greatest herds of elk and mule deer; and hosts a number of rare and sensitive plants. BLM itself acknowledges that the Roan also contains at least 19,000 acres of wilderness-quality lands. The area is extremely popular with sportsmen for backcountry angling, hunting and other recreation. The BLM, however, plans to lease the Roan for oil and gas development, and to allow drilling more than 3,600 wells on the Upper Plateau. BLM admits that the backcountry and wilderness values for which the Roan is known would be seriously compromised by such intensive development. BLM's leasing plan also disregards widespread opposition from the towns and counties in the area, as well as from Colorado's governor and congressional delegation -- all of whom sought to additional protections for the Roan. Earthjustice represents a coalition of groups in challenging the BLM leasing plan. |
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Between 1974 and 1980, tens of thousands of gallons of toxic industrial waste were dumped illegally at the Brookfield landfill in Staten Island. It was one of five New York City landfills involved in a 1982 federal investigation into illegal dumping which sent a city Department of Sanitation official and a hauling operator to prison. While cleanup has concluded at the four other landfills involved in the 1982 investigation, work still has yet to begin on the Brookfield site in Staten Island. Earthjustice is representing Staten Island residents in a lawsuit against the city of New York to force the cleanup of this abandoned toxic waste dump. |
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Earthjustice, on behalf of local conservation groups, is challenging state and federal authorizations for the Highwood Generating Station, a 250-MW coal-fired power plant proposed by a small group of eastern Montana electricity cooperatives known as the Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative. Earthjustice is also challenging a $600 million federal subsidy of this power plant -- a power plant that would produce pollutants and greenhouse gases for decades to come. This proposed plant would also built on top of one of the last preserved campsites of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the National Park Service has reported that its destruction would represent "an irreparable loss to the national heritage of our country." |
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Coalbed Methane Gas & Coal Mining Development in Flathead River Basin 07/01/08 |
The Flathead River flows from British Columbia south into Montana and forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park. Coalbed methane gas extraction and open-pit coal mining in the Canadian headwaters of the Flathead River threaten to fragment the Flathead's abundant habitat for grizzly bears, wolves, and wolverines, and to pollute the river's pristine waters. Earthjustice has submitted petitions to the appropriate international agencies to seek to protect this special river and its surrounding habitat. |
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Each winter, the federal government feeds approximately 8,000 elk and 900 bison, or buffalo, on the 24,700-acre Jackson Hole National Elk Refuge in northwest Wyoming. This winter feeding program began in 1910 after growing human development in the Jackson Hole region intruded on winter ranges for native wildlife, and has continued ever since. Now, however, it has become apparent that crowding of elk and bison on winter feed lines -- like crowding of children in a kindergarten class room -- exposes the animals to a high danger of disease transmission. Already the fed elk and bison are widely afflicted with brucellosis, a disease that causes female animals to abort their calves. Even worse, crowding on the refuge feed lines exposes the elk to a high risk of contracting chronic wasting disease, the elk equivalent of "mad cow" disease, which is always fatal and which has steadily been moving northwest in Wyoming toward the Jackson Hole area over the past several years. Despite these wildlife disease threats, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided in 2007 to continue winter feeding of elk and bison for the foreseeable future, rather than to embark on a new plan that would seek to return these animals to their native winter range. In making this decision, the agency deferred to the wishes of local hunting outfitters, who want high elk numbers for their clients, and local ranchers, who wish to keep the elk away from forage that is now used to graze cattle. But the law governing the National Wildlife Refuge System requires the Service to maintain "healthy populations" of wildlife for the benefit of present and future generations of all Americans, not to maintain feedgrounds that perpetuate wildlife disease for the benefit of a few local interests. Earthjustice filed a lawsuit in June 2008 to enforce this law. |
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In our Lake Okeechobee backpumping case, a federal district judge ruled in December 2006 that the South Florida Water Management District must comply with the Clean Water Act by obtaining permits for its discharges of polluted water into the lake. In response to our court win, the EPA has issued an administrative rule that would grant an exception to the requirement for permits which would allow water transfers between heavily polluted waterways into pristine bodies of water, including drinking water supplies. This rule would not only effect Florida and Lake Okeechobee, but all waters nationwide. Water management districts throughout the nation could spread toxic algae blooms, introduce invasive species, chemicals, and other pollutants by these unregulated water transfers. Earthjustice is challenging this rule. |
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Earthjustice is fighting for stronger limits on ozone or smog -- pollution linked to premature deaths, thousands of emergency room visits, and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year. Ozone is especialy dangerous to small children and senior citizens, who are often warned to stay indoors on polluted days. Smog pollution can also severely damage forests and plants, stunting their growth and increasing the risk of die-off from disease. Unfortunately, smog standards recently adopted by the U.S. EPA are far weaker than recommended unanimously by the agency's own science advisors, leaving public health and the environment at great risk. Earthjustice is challenging these standards on behalf of public health and conservation groups. |
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In 2007, Earthjustice won its challenge to the Bush administration's 2005 revision of the National Forest Management Act planning regulations, which govern management of the 193-million-acre National Forest System. In response to our win, the Forest Service issued revised regulations. Unfortunately, the revised regulations are virtually the same as the regulations that the court invalidated, and the process by which they were adopted suffers from the same legal infirmities as the 2005 revision. Once again the regulations run counter to the National Forest Management Act, which was passed in 1976 in reaction to rampant overharvesting of commercial timber from the national forests, especially through clearcutting. The Act was expressly intended to reduce the Forest Service's discretion in managing the national forests, placing limits on timber harvesting and promoting the protection of other resources, including wildlife and native plants, watersheds, and recreation, while the revised regulations eliminate precisely those limits and protections. This suit will challenge the revised regulations. |
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Seismic surveys associated with offshore oil and gas development are among the loudest sources of noise in the world's oceans and have been detected thousands of kilometers away from the sound source. Despite this, the National Marine Fisheries Service and Minerals Management Service have approved permits which authorize seismic surveys in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in 2008. The noises associated with these surveys can cause hearing loss in marine mammals, have been associated with whale strandings, and can disrupt marine mammals' feeding and migration and impair their ability to detect predators. The agencies' cursory environmental assessments fail to fully assess the effects of such noise on marine mammals including the endangered bowhead whale. In addition, NMFS issued a permit that violates the Marine Mammal Protection Act because it because allows a single seismic survey to harass tens of thousands of marine mammals and allows the survey to cause potentially serious injury to marine mammals. Earthjustice is challenging these permits on behalf of conservation and Native Alaskan organizations. |
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As a favor to U.S. oil refineries, EPA has exempted hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous wastes produced at refineries (over 300,000 tons annually) from stringent federal regulation. With a sweep of the pen, these wastes are no longer considered "hazardous" if converted into gas and burned at the refineries. The waste, however, is known to be toxic, carcinogenic and prone to combust spontaneously and thus poses grave hazards to our air, water, and the communities in which it is stored, transported and burned. Earthjustice has filed suit to strike down this exemption. |
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Earthjustice petitioned the state water board to establish instream flow standards that would sustain beneficial instream uses, such as ecological protection, Native Hawaiian practices, recreation, and scenic values, for streams in Central Maui. The petition demanded that the water currently being hoarded and wasted by former plantation interests be returned to the streams of origin. In March 2008, the Commission on Water Resource Management decided to take over management of four major streams in central Maui. The decision means that those diverting water or planning to divert water from these streams will have to apply for a permit. |
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According to Superfund legislation passed in 1980, the EPA should have developed regulations that required mining companies and other high-risk polluting industires to provide financial proof that in case of toxic spills and other environmental contamination, these companies would be able to clean up the resultant contamination. The EPA has yet to issue these regulations, and some mining companies have declared bankruptcy instead of paying to clean up their sites, leaving the taxpayers with the bill. Without the financial incentive to prevent pollution, these companies have little incentive to improve their waste management. The suit seeks to compel the EPA to produce these long overdue regulations for mining companies, therefore limiting the public's liability for the damage caused to the environment by poor practices by these companies. |
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The proposed Rock Creek Mine project in northwest Montana would be located adjacent to and literally under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area in the Kootenai National Forest. The copper and silver mine's location is in a sensitive portion of grizzly bear habitat, and construction will add sediment to local waters, which would smother bull trout spawning areas. Since 2001, the Fish & Wildlife Service has issued flawed biological opinions repeatedly, and Earthjustice has repeatedly -- and successfully -- challenged the approval for the mine. In December 2007, the Fish & Wildlife Service once again gave the mining company approval to begin construction activities, based on a biological opinion that relies on mitigation measures that are not sufficient to protect the populations of grizzly bear. This biological opinion also permits extensive degradation of a portion of Rock Creek previously deemed critical habitat for bull trout. To allow mining and other mineral development under federally designated wilderness would set a dangerous precedent. Earthjustice is challenging this renewed approval for the mine. |
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Thousands of contaminated and abandoned gas stations, factories, other industiral and commercial sites are poisoning the air, land, and water for communities across New York. The state adopted regulations that fall far short of the landmark law passed in 2003 to clean up many of these brownfields. In February 2008, the court ruled that contaminated sites must be cleaned up to the statutory cleanup objectives, not simply to the contaminated background levels at the site. |
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Alaska's Chukchi Sea provides vital habitat for polar bears, endangered bowhead whales, walrus, beluga whales, seals, fish and marine birds. Native Alaskan communities along the Chukchi Sea practice a subsistence way of life and have depended on the resources of this sea for their cultural and nutritional well-being for thousands of years. The U.S. Interior Department has decided to open nearly 30 million acres of this vitally important habitat in the Chukchi Sea for oil and gas leasing and possible development. The environmental impact statement prepared by the Mineral Management Service (part of the Department of the Interior) in connection with the lease sale failed to properly evaluate the potential effect of exploration and drilling in this pristine area, and did not adequately analyze the combined effects of climate change and oil and gas activities on the wildlife that inhabits the sea and the communities that depend upon it. Earthjustice filed suit on behalf of a coalition of Alaska Native organizations and conservation groups challenging the adequacy of the agency's environmental impact analysis. Earthjustice will ask the court to void any leases issued pursuant to the sale if it determines that the environmental review was inadequate until the government conducts a more thorough environmental review. |
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The population of groundfish off the coast of New England has been depleted for years. In 1994 nearly all fishing was banned from waters identified as spawning grounds and sanctuaries for cod, haddock, and other groundfish in order to give groundfish a chance to rebound from overfishing. Herring mid-water trawlers were initially banned from the groundfish-closed areas in 1994. But in 1998 federal regulators decided to re-open these areas to trawlers, based on an assumption that the herring ships would catch little or no groundfish in their nets. As a result of this loophole in the regulations, it's estimated that these vessels have caught hundreds of thousands of pounds of mature and juvenile groundfish as bycatch. Earthjustice has filed suit on behalf of local fishing groups to force federal regulators to close this loophole. |
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Protecting California's Air: Removing Agricultural Exemptions 01/28/08 |
California state law used to exempt farms, dairies, and other agricultural operations from getting air permits for pollution from sources such as agricultural dust, diesel irrigation pumps, and livestock waste. This exemption made compliance with the federal Clean Air Act impossible. Earthjustice sued the EPA for allowing California permitting programs to include the exemption, and Earthjustice's victory led California legislators to strip the exemption from the law. However, EPA staff recently discovered that it unwittingly approved a provision with the older exemption for agricultural sources back in 1972 as part of a larger state implementation law, and could not find any subsequent action to strip the provision. Unless the EPA or the state take affirmative action to remove the provision, it remains federally-enforceable law. This suit seeks to compel the EPA to remove the provision. |
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UPDATE: On July 18, 2008, a federal judge ruled that federal protections should be restored to the gray wolves of the northern Rockies pending the outcome of the litigation. Gray wolves have come perilously close to extinction in the Rocky Mountains. Only in the past decade has the wolf population rebounded from a population of less than 50 to more than 1,300 wolves today. Visitors come to Yellowstone every year to get the chance to see and hear wolves in the wild. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued two rules that would not only reverse these hard-won gains, by killing hundreds of these magnificent predators. One rule would remove gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from protection under the Endangered Species Act. The other rule would allow states in the Northern Rockies to kill wolves whenever wolves had impacts on wild ungulate populations. The governors of Idaho and Wyoming express outright hostility toward wolves, and numerous counties in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have adopted resolutions declaring wolves an "unacceptable species." Once wolves are delisted, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana could reduce wolf populations to a paltry 100 wolves per state -- in other words, they could destroy 1,000 wolves out of the current 1,300-wolf population. Earthjustice is challenging these two rules since the FWS has not ensured that gray wolves will be protected after they are removed from the list of threatened and endangered species. |
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Challenge to Coalbed Methane Development in HD Mountains 01/23/08 |
A proposed natural gas drilling project near Durango, Colorado, will bulldoze roadless forest, worsen air pollution, threaten homes, and pollute wilderness areas and Mesa Verde National Park. The project porposes almost 200 new coalbed methane wells, including approximately 30 wells and 8 to 9 miles of new roads inside the currently undeveloped HD Mountains roadless areas. Despite this, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have approved the permits necessary for the project. Earthjustice is challenging the project on behalf of conservation groups, homeowners, a rural county, and individuals whose livelihood would be negatively impacted by the drilling as proposed. |
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In the spring of 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bowed to industry and developer pressure by issuing a rule that greatly diminished the critical habitat of the endangered California red legged frog. Critical habitat is defined to include those areas that are "essential to the conservation of the species." Also, by law, critical habitat determinations must be made based upon the "best scientific and commercial data available." Earthjustice discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests that political pressure by officials in the D.C. office, including former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Julie MacDonald, rose to the level of improper influence compromising the scientific integrity of the final critical habitat rule. This pressure caused field office scientists to ignore important scientific documents, such as the frog's Recovery Plan, and to exclude from the final rule significant areas of habitat that the FWS had previously determined were "essential to the conservation" of the frog. The result is a final critical habitat rule that does not provide for the recovery of the frog, nor is it based on the best available science. Earthjustice is challenging this rule since the best available science was not used to determine the the critical habitat. |
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Improving Energy Efficiency Standards for Electric Transformers 12/11/07 |
We've all seen them -- those gray boxes mounted on telephone poles. Those boxes are electricity distribution transformers, and they serve to reduce the power of electric current from the high voltage used in transmission lines to the lower voltages we use in our homes, offices, and businesses. Some transformers lose a lot more electricity than others, and all those inefficient transformers add up to a huge amount of wasted energy. According to the Department of Energy, if our utility companies started installing only the most efficient transformers available on the market today, the energy we save would avoid the need to construct 20 large-scale power plants by the year 2038. However, instead of requiring these more efficient models, the DOE selected weak standards for electricity distribution transformers, ignoring the environmental benefits of going to stronger standards. Earthjustice is challenging the adoption of these standards. |
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The South Shale Ridge wilderness is home to wildlife and rare plants, and is a popular destination for hikers and hunters. However, the BLM reversed an earlier recommendation to protect the ridge as a Wilderness Study Area and instead leased the vast majority of land for oil and gas drilling. In August 2007, the Federal District Court in Colorado ruled that the BLM violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted the leases, and ordered the BLM to consider the effect of drilling and development on rare species in the area. |
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In 2002, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied to extend protection of the Bonneville cutthroat trout under the Endangered Species Act, despite the fact that the species has been eliminated from 90 percent of its range, due to habitat degradation, predation, and hybridization from non-native trout. Earthjustice filed suit on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, and the Pacific Rivers Council, and in October, 2007, the FWS announced that it has reversed its earlier decision and will consider placing the Bonneville cutthroat trout on the Endangered Species List. |
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Two endangered species -- the Huachuca water umbel and the Southwestern willow flycatcher -- will lose vital habitat if groundwater pumping near the upper San Pedro River continues unabated. Although the U.S. Army's Fort Huachuca is responsible for much of the groundwater depletion, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service produced a biological opinion which states that the Fort's continued water depletion will not jeopardize the San Pedro River or the species that depend on it. Instead of abiding by the Endangered Species Act, the opinion makes vague promises about water conservation without providing legally required guarantees. This lawsuit challenges the lawfulness of the biological opinion. |
