Here is the order:
An excerpt:
The defendants’ motion therefore presents the question of whether harms arising from actions or omissions that are required by a federal statute can constitute a public nuisance. Though mindful of, and alarmed by, the potentially devastating ecological, environmental, and economic consequences that may result from the establishment of an Asian carp population in the Great Lakes, the Court is nevertheless constrained to answer the question in the negative. In the absence of a constitutional violation (and none is here alleged), it is not the province of the courts to order parties to take action that would directly contravene statutory mandates and prohibitions, and the common law recognizes that actions required by law do not give rise to liability for nuisance. If the plaintiffs want to remove these congressional impediments to hydrologic separation and to replace them with effective barriers between the waterways, they must do so by means of the legislative process, not by alleging that the Corps’ acts and/or omissions, required by federal statutes, violate federal nuisance common law and therefore justify an override of those statutes by the courts. Plaintiffs’ complaint, therefore, is dismissed.
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