Recently in Environmental Law Category

It's been more than two years since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and BP has finally reached a settlement with prosecutors.

The London-based company has agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges including manslaughter, and will pay $4 billion in fees and fines over the next five years, The Washington Post reports. That's in addition to a $525 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that will be paid over the next three years.

The plea will settle many of the criminal charges against BP, which has also moved to settle thousands of of civil claims brought by individuals, Reuters reports.

The EPA's more stringent air quality rule that limits how much nitrogen dioxide emissions can be emitted near major roadways was upheld by a federal appeals court.

The upshot of the ruling is that car manufacturers, factories, and oil companies may all have to make significant changes to their business to comply with the rules.

More likely, the oil industry will appeal the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., sending the case for possible review before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The EPA's proposed greenhouse gas rules are legal, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Notably, the decision also quoted a few lines from the famous "I'm Just a Bill" Schoolhouse Rock cartoon from the 1970s.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals clears the way for the EPA to create new rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and factories, Reuters reports. The EPA's decision to set limits is lawful, and the agency's interpretation of the Clean Air Act is "unambiguously correct," the judges held.

So why did the D.C. Circuit cite a 1970s-era cartoon in its decision?

The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld Manhattan Beach's plastic bag ban on Thursday, ruling that the small Southern California beach town was not required to conduct a full-scale environmental review before enacting legislation.

Though there was no question that cities have the power to enact such a ban, the court's decision will make it much easier for smaller localities to ban plastic bags without incurring significant costs.

Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, a group of plastic bag manufacturers and distributors, have been challenging bans across the state, particularly when municipalities fail to conduct a full-blown Environmental Impact Review (EIR).

When Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001, it inherited more than it bargained for. A lawsuit against the company accusing Texaco of contaminating the Ecuadorean Amazon was filed in a New York court, but was moved to Ecuador in 2003. Since then, Chevron, Ecuador and lawyers representing local villagers have been hashing it out. The court logs read like a legal thriller.

Not only did Chevron force a judge to resign when it produced recordings pointing to a bribery scheme, it has also acquired outtakes from a documentary showing a plaintiff's lawyer discussing meetings he had with judges and government officials. The company also has evidence that shows collaboration between plaintiffs and a court-appointed expert who valued the lawsuit, reports Reuters.

Despite all the evidence produced by Chevron, Ecuador Judge Nicolas Zambrano ruled against the company, ordering it to pay a $8.6 billion fine.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have agreed to a settlement with thousands of Sept 11 workers who cleared rubble from the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The workers, who cleaned potentially toxic materials without sophisticated respiratory equipment, will receive $47.5 million. In exchange for the settlement, the workers have agreed to drop their lawsuits against the government. Each worker will still have the option of rejecting the settlement and fighting for a larger award in court.

According to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, the deal is fair and reasonable. Hellerstein who is overseeing the litigation, revealed the settlement in an order filed Thursday. He called the deal "fair and reasonable." Hellerstein is no stranger to settlements arising out of the 9/11 attacks. Hellerstein recently oversaw a $712 million settlement in the lawsuit between 10,000 ground zero rescue and cleanup workers and New York City. He threw out a $657 settlement because he said it was too small. The settlement in this case, would be added to the previous settlement, bringing the total figure to approximately $760 milion.

It looks like BP will be opening its wallet once again. The energy company agreed to pay $15 million to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act in a Texas refinery case. The violations came at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, which had been hit by a number of scandals over the past few years. The Clean Air Act is a law outlines the responsibilities for the EPA with regard to maintaining the environment. The Clean Air Act was last updated by Amendment of 1990. Several minor changes have been made since then by the legislature.

The $15 million represents the largest Clean Air Act recovery at an individual facility. The pollution fine now leaves a total figure of $137 million recovered by the federal government from BP for violations involving fires and toxic leaks. The Texas City refinery first came under investigation after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 people and injured over 170, The New York Times reports. BP paid a $50 million fine to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for a number of violations related to the blast. As of 2009, the Texas attorney general had sued BP for violating the Clean Air Act 72 times in the previous five years.

Can you think of a company that needs bad news any less than BP? One would be hard pressed to do so.

Unfortunately, the company is in the headlines yet again, this time after agreeing to pay a $50 million fine for violations of safety regulations at its Texas City refinery. The facility is the company's largest refinery, producing nearly 460,000 barrels of oil per day.

Attorneys for the workers killed and injured in the 2005 Texas accident applauded the $50M fine agreement. BP was originally fined $21 million dollars after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that BP did not sufficiently protect its employees, the Associated Foreign Press reports. After the fine, the company spent around a billion dollars to upgrade safety. Despite the spending, inspectors found that BP was still not adequately protecting its employees. Their fine was more than doubled to $50.6 million in 2009. 

In a harshly worded opinion, Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman struck down the six-month moratorium on deep water drilling sought by the Obama Administration. The judge characterized the moratorium as overly-broad and based on the mistaken assumption that because one oil rig failed, all will fail.

Judge Feldman held the Administration's court papers were based on "incomprehensible" studies and made "factually incorrect" arguments that abused "reason (and) common sense." According to CBS News, Feldman called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill "an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster," but noted it was only the fourth such incident worldwide in 41 years, and the first ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the battle between wolves and caribou, who is king? A federal judge weighed in on that question Thursday, temporarily refusing to allow the state of Alaska to kill seven wolves on a national wildlife refuge. The state has asked for permission to use helicopters to shoot the wolves in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, in order to protect the caribou. According to the state, the number of caribou are dwindling and the wolves are invading their calving grounds.

Interestingly, one of the reasons for the concern over the caribou is because they are a needed food source for a small group of people living on Unimak, an island in the Aleutian chain. In other words, one might say they want to save the caribou so that they can be eaten, though the people on Unimak do not wish to wipe out the entire herd.