Eighth Circuit Decides Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate v. U.S. Corps of Engineers

Here is the opinion. The court’s syllabus:

Action challenging the issuance of Clean Water Act permits allowing a farm owner to dredge and fill portions of Enemy Swim Lake in furtherance of the owner’s activities in building a road over an inlet of the lake; a 2010 letter from the Corps was not a final agency action for purposes of the permit and exemptions determinations as the letter did not affect the legal rights of the farm owner, the Tribe or the Corps; Tribe’s recapture claim under 33 U.S.C. Sec. 1344(f)(2) was a nonjusticiable enforcement action; Tribe’s claims arising from the Corps’s permit and exemption determinations made from 1998 to 2003 were barred by the statute of limitations and the Tribe was not eligible for equitable tolling because it had not diligently pursued its rights; dismissal of the Tribe’s arbitrary-and-capricious challenge to the Corps’s 2009 permit decision rejected as the Corps did not violate its own regulations in issuing the 2009 nationwide-permit determination; the district court did not make a final decision with respect to the lawfulness of the Corps’s regulations enacted pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act, and the court lacked jurisdiction to review the lawfulness of the regulations.

Briefs.

 

Eighth Circuit Briefs in Sisseton-Wahpeton Effort to Save Burial Mounds

Here are the materials in Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation v. United States Corps of Engineers:

Opening Brief

Federal Answer Brief

Reply

Lower court materials here.

Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Effort to Stop Road (Mostly) Fails

Here are the materials in Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation v. United States Corps of Engineers (D.S.D.):

90-sisseton-brief

us-army-corps-brief

92-sisseton-reply

93-dct-order

An excerpt:

For the reasons explained above, the Court denies Plaintiffs’ request for an injunction against the Corps, remands to the Corps for reconsideration whether the 2009 gully crossings were the type of undertaking that could affect historic properties under 36 C.F.R. § 800.3(a) and to complete the Section 106 process if so necessary, and denies all other requests for relief requested by Plaintiffs. Judgement will enter accordingly.