Water

  • Cleaning up and cooling down waterways

    Water is essential to the survival of life, elemental in the maintenance of stable ecosystems, and itself a habitat for aquatic species. Water quality is a cornerstone environmental issue, and Earthrise Law Center is committed to its protection and improvement.

    Earthrise works to clean up and cool down waterways on a regional and national scale by strengthening and ensuring enforcement of existing laws like the federal Clean Water Act. Earthrise has been working to curb vessel pollution, including the discharge of invasive species that travel from port to port in ships’ ballast tanks. Earthrise is using advocacy and litigation to strengthen the water quality standards, or goals, for waterbodies, including those waterbodies that are the home to the Pacific Northwest’s iconic and imperiled cold-water species such as salmon and bull trout. Earthrise has brought numerous legal actions against industrial facilities that discharge pollutants into waterways.  These cases are preventing the addition of mercury, lead, and other toxic pollutants into waters in which people regularly swim and recreate.  Earthrise has recently begun taking its enforcement work beyond the Northwest, by tackling water pollution problems in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Arkansas, and the Chesapeake Bay.

water-issues

Earthrise secures improvements to industrial stormwater discharge permits

Earthrise Law Center, on behalf of our clients Columbia Riverkeeper and Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC), today successfully resolved a lawsuit challenging Oregon’s general permit for discharges of industrial stormwater
grant, philanthropy, water-issues

Thank You Rose Foundation

Thank you to the Rose Foundation for their grant to fund Earthrise’s Puget Sound work.
water-issues

Earthrise files suit against the City of Medford over its pollution of the Rogue River

On behalf of Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA), on May 16, 2018 Earthrise Law Center filed a lawsuit against the City of Medford, Oregon over its Clean Water Act violations that have caused harmful changes to the aquatic ecosystem in the Rogue River, a prized steelhead fishery in Southern Oregon.
sustainability, water-issues

Wild Fish Conservancy Sues Cooke Aquaculture Over CWA Violations Related to its Atlantic Salmon Farming Facilities in Puget Sound

On behalf of Wild Fish Conservancy, on Monday, November 13th, Earthrise filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington against Cooke Aquaculture for Clean Water Act violations related to the near-complete structural failure of its Atlantic salmon farming facility in Deepwater Bay off of Cypress Island in late August.
accomplishments, water-issues

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Clean Water Rule Jurisdictional Issue

On October 11 the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, a group of consolidated cases in which various environmental and industry petitioners are challenging EPA’s “Clean Water Rule.”
accomplishments, water-issues

Coalition Sues EPA Over Massachusetts Stormwater Permit Delay

On behalf of 10 watershed protection groups in Massachusetts, last Friday, September 22nd, Earthrise filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Massachusetts challenging the Trump EPA’s decision to stay the implementation of the state’s new municipal stormwater permit.
accomplishments, faculty, press, water-issues-feature, water-issues

Earthrise files brief with US Supreme Court over WOTUS

On behalf of our clients Waterkeeper Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and several other organizations (“Waterkeeper”), Earthrise filed their opening merits brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on April 27, 2017, in the case captioned as National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, et al.
accomplishments, water-issues-feature, water-issues

Court Ousts Oregon’s Water Pollution Clean-up Plans, Too Hot for Salmon

Yesterday, Earthrise and its co-counsel, on behalf of Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA), won a challenge against Oregon’s illegal water temperature standards, which change goals from cold temperatures to hot—and sometimes even lethal for salmon and other imperiled cold-water species. 

accomplishments, student, video, water-issues

Earthrise Files Petition to Address “Zombie Permits”

Earthrise filed a petition today on behalf of the Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA), the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC), and fish advocate, Bill Bakke, seeking to force Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to address the enormous backlog of administratively continued Clean Water Act permits, known as “Zombie Permits.”
accomplishments, water-issues

Trump Instructs EPA to “Review and Rescind or Revise” Waters of the U.S. Rule

On February 28, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers (the “Agencies”) to begin a rulemaking to rescind or revise the Clean Water Rule, a 2015 regulation that defined the phrase “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) as used in the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), thereby identifying those waters protected by the Act’s restrictions on pollutant discharges.
accomplishments, water-issues

Lawsuit Seeks New Toxic Standards for Washington State Waters

Today Earthrise filed a lawsuit on behalf of Oregon-based Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA) challenging EPA’s failure to respond to an 88-page petition submitted to the federal agency over three years ago, in October 2013. The petition seeks EPA’s action to update Washington’s water quality standards for toxics, primarily for the protection of aquatic life, such as salmon and steelhead.
accomplishments, water-issues

Green River Trial Final Stages- Earthrise Seeks Cleanup

Last week, Earthrise brought the Green River in Illinois one step closer to being restored after decades of concrete dumping along its banks by an adjacent landowner and owner of a demolition and trucking company. In federal court in Rock Island, Illinois, on behalf of Quad Cities Waterkeeper and Prairie Rivers Network, Earthrise attorneys Kevin Cassidy and Lia Comerford presented evidence about the harm the unauthorized concrete dumping has caused to their clients and the Green River and urged federal judge Sara Darrow to order and oversee a comprehensive restoration plan.
accomplishments, water-issues

Washington’s Refusal to Operate under Coastal Protection Law Could Lose the State Federal Funding

Longtime partners, Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA), represented by Earthrise attorney Allison LaPlante and Seattle attorney Paul Kampmeier of Kampmeier & Knutsen filed a lawsuit today against the EPA and NOAA for their failure to force Washington State to control polluted runoff in the state’s coastal watersheds, including Puget Sound. The lawsuit aims to force the agencies to impose Congressionally-mandated funding cuts on the State of Washington for failing to comply with a law that requires the state to protect coastal water quality.