Recent News About Natural Resources Defense Council
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A federal appellate court has affirmed a Chicago federal judge’s ruling that switched off suits by a group of electricity producers and Chicago-area power consumers, which sought to invalidate a state law requiring coal and gas burning electricity companies buy credits to prop up two failing Exelon nuclear plants, saying the law doesn’t infringe on federal regulatory prerogatives.
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A Chicago federal judge has refused to sink a lawsuit by environmental activists alleging the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has polluted waterways with excessive levels of phosphorus, ruling the district failed to show the activists contradicted themselves, by arguing in state court environmental permits do not significantly restrict phosphorus discharges, while arguing in federal court the permits do impose such restrictions.
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The impact of a federal court's decision handed down last month against an Illinois coal-burning power generator probably will have limited effect outside the state, an environmental law attorney said during a recent interview.
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A group of environmental action organizations appear to have more work ahead of them if they wish to persuade a federal judge that the region’s largest sewage treatment agency broke federal law and should be held responsible for what they have called unnatural levels of plant and algae growth in local rivers and streams, which the environmental groups claim is spurred by phosphorus in the treated water flowing from the agency’s sewage treatment plants.
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Environmental action groups have secured a legal victory in their efforts to force the region’s largest treater of wastewater to limit the amount of phosphorus – a fertilizing chemical that can cause destructive algae blooms in rivers and streams – put into local streams by its sewage treatment plants, as an Illinois appellate panel said state regulatory bodies were wrong to grant permits for three of the region’s largest treatment plants without more stringent phosphorus limits in place.
