Here is the opinion.
An excerpt:
As the district court correctly concluded, it lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the Pakootas and Michel claims for penalties for the 892 days of noncompliance with the unilateral administrative order, and properly dismissed their claims.
Here is the news article, and an excerpt:
Taking the dams out is part of a more than $325 million restoration plan intended to bring back five runs of salmon to the river. More than three quarters of its watershed is within Olympic National Park, making it one of the best opportunities for restoration in the lower forty-eight.
The plan is for the river to be free-flowing within three years — after nearly 20 years of talking about it. President George H.W. Bush signed the Elwha Restoration Act in 1992. It took all that time to appropriate the money to pay for the takedown and broker the politics of the project.
Meanwhile, the cost ballooned to about three times original projections. Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, the Republican lawmaker who fought appropriating the money for years, won’t be celebrating Wednesday.
“It is something with which I disagreed, and I don’t wish to be reminded of it,” Gorton said last week at his Seattle law office.
But the shutdown is a step some wondered if they would ever witness. Adeline Smith, 93, one of the oldest members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, said she remembered rescuing baby salmon stranded in pools when operation of the dams would ramp the river levels up and down.
“We felt sorry for them,” she said of the gasping smolts.
Robert Elofson, river restoration director for the tribe, watched as the turbines on Elwha Dam slowly wound down, finally going still. “I’ve got a few tears in my eyes,” he said in the sudden quiet. “The tribe always wanted the dams out of the river.”
Here is the article (hat tip to Catherine O’Neill).
An excerpt:
Legislative bills seek to minimize the economic hit of the new rule, help ensure that paper mills, factories and sewage treatment plants can get variances and cement the Department of Environmental Quality’s second-fiddle role on ranches and farms.
The Legislature’s moves signal that DEQ’s nation-leading standards, in the works since 2004, could end up not doing much.
The new standards, set for Environmental Quality Commission approval in two weeks, would dramatically tighten pollution limits for a host of pollutants, including metals, flame retardants, PCBs, dioxins and plastic additives.
They come amid mounting evidence of toxic pollution in the state’s rivers and nearly two decades after studies showed tribal members along the Columbia River eat far more fish than the general population.
Bills “at the 11th hour” could undercut the standards, said Carl Merkle, environmental planning manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
“We want to see fair implementation (of the new rule) and we know that will occur over a long period of time,” Merkle said. “But we also want to see it effectively implemented, so it’s not just a paper exercise.”
Industry and cities say the uniquely tight standards — in some cases below natural levels in river water — would be impossible to meet without millions of dollars worth of treatment. The rule could discourage new industries from moving in and boost sewer rates, they say.
In Canadian Forest Products Inc. v. Sam, the British Columbia Supreme Court provided a short term solution for two separate forestry/aboriginal title issues. Ultimately, aboriginal interests won the day, but the injunctions provided and denied by the court are almost certainly only paving the way for future litigation.
In Da’naxda’xwAwaetlala First Nation v. British Columbia, the First Nation received judicial review by the B.C. Supreme Court of a decision made by the Minister of Environment, seeking to quash the Minister’s decision on four grounds.
Here is the article.
Miigwetch to A.K.
Fort Erie, Ontario, has recently approved a subdivision expansion into land that contains 5 recognized pre-contact archaeological sites. However, that approval is contingent upon 47 requirements, of which #36 is…
Here.
Near the end of the argument, Judge Wood responded to an industry lawyer with this:
“On the one hand you have commerce; on the other hand you have the planet.”
Turtle Talk 
You must be logged in to post a comment.