The respondent-Department of Health and Environmental Control could not bypass its obligation to consider whether there was any potential for manure, litter or process wastewater from the proposed concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to be added to the waters of ...
Read More »Environmental – Civil Practice – Class Certification – Predominance – Liability
In support of her motion to certify a plaintiff class, plaintiff alleges that defendant bought part of a tract of land that is contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) and that defendant failed to prevent the migration of PCB to surrounding ...
Read More »Environmental – Real Property – Administrative – Public Trust Lands – Captain Sam’s Spit
Building a proposed 2,380-foot steel sheet pile wall outside a “critical area” to which S.C. Code Ann. § 48-39-30(D) applies would allow a developer to construct a road across a narrow isthmus of Kiawah Island so the developer could build ...
Read More »Environmental – Administrative – Radioactive Waste Disposal – Technical Regulations – Water Migration
Regulations concerning (1) the migration of water onto radioactive waste disposal units and (2) the migration of waste or waste-contaminated water out of the disposal units are “technical requirements,” which petitioner Chem-Nuclear Systems, LLC, must satisfy as a condition of ...
Read More »Environmental – Dominion Energy prevails in Clean Water Act appeal
The Sierra Club sued Dominion Energy under the citizen-suit provision of the Clean Water Act. Following a bench trial, the district court found that rainwater and groundwater were leaching arsenic from the coal ash in the landfill and settling ponds, ...
Tagged with: Dominion Energy
Read More »Environmental – Civil Practice – Preliminary Injunction – Administrative – MOX Plant
The federal defendants’ plan to stop work on the Savannah River Site (SRS) mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility project (MOX facility or project) would violate an international treaty and a federal statute and would harm South Carolina by causing the ...
Tagged with: Civil Practice
Read More »Environmental – Public Trust Doctrine – Civil Practice – Standing – Justiciability – Riparian Rights – Agricultural Water Use
Although plaintiffs complain that, under the Surface Water Withdrawal, Permitting, Use, and Reporting Act, farmers have a perpetual right to continue to withdraw their registered amount of water, regardless of how conditions may change in the future, plaintiffs have not ...
Tagged with: Civil Practice
Read More »Environmental – Erosion Control – Bulkhead without Revetment – Contrary Evidence
A real estate developer sought a bulkhead/revetment combination to protect the upland property of Captain Sam’s Spit. Expert testimony established that the bulkhead without the revetment would exacerbate erosion; therefore, the Administrative Law Court’s approval of the bulkhead without the ...
Tagged with: Erosion
Read More »Environmental – State Law Preempts Local Wastewater Rule
EQT Production Co. v. Wender (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-179-17, 32 pp.) (Harris, J.) No. 16-1938, Aug. 30, 2017; USDC at Charleston W.Va. (Copenhaver, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: A West Virginia county’s local ordinance prohibiting the disposal of wastewater from plaintiff ...
Tagged with: Wastewater
Read More »Environmental – Civil Practice – Preliminary Injunction – Endangered Species Act – Beach Erosion Control
Sierra Club v. Von Kolnitz (Lawyers Weekly No. 002-113-17, 20 pp.) (David Norton, J.) 2:16-cv-03815; D.S.C. Holding: Defendants’ own studies have shown that their sea walls are interfering with the nesting of endangered sea turtles and that the sea walls ...
Tagged with: Civil Practice
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