Environmental Law

In 2017,1 district courts in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided three cases that clarified issues arising under the Clean Water Act (CWA). 2 The United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia preliminarily enjoined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers from enforcing the Waters of the United States Rule (WOTUS Rule), 3 a regulatory attempt to define the term Waters of the United States, which is a jurisdictional threshold for agencies\u27 regulatory authority under the CWA.4 Also, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama ruled that ongoing contamination that resulted from wholly past discharges of pollutants was not a violation of the CWA. 5 Finally, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida ruled that Florida\u27s statutory enforcement scheme for CWA violations was not similar to the federal enforcement scheme because it did not allow for persons unaffected by an alleged violation to have input into the State\u27s enforcement action, and therefore, an ongoing enforcement action by Florida did not bar a CWA citizen suit brought by plaintiffs for the same violations.