Exam 21: Environmental Law

In Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, where an environmental group sued the EPA and other parties because logging companies were not required to have pollution discharge permits for rain runoff on logging roads. The appeals court held that the rain runoff was associated with industrial activity, so discharge permits were required. The Supreme Court held that the EPA had properly considered the matter and properly decided that permits were not required.

Nonattainment areas under the Clean Air Act:

The book Silent Spring played a significant role in raising public concerns about the environment in the 1990s.

Primary authority to enforce the Clean Air Act and other environmental statues lies with:

Air pollution permits are not needed for stores and buildings not related to production processes that emit pollutants.

In pollution cases involving strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities, courts have found which of the following activities to be abnormally dangerous:

A public nuisance is:

The ____ is the agency with primary responsibility for the Endangered Species Act.

Biotechnology products are subject to regulation under:

In Massachusetts v. EPA, where Massachusetts and other states sued to force regulation of greenhouse gases from vehicles, the Supreme Court held that:

In Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, where an environmental group sued the EPA and other parties because logging companies were not required to have pollution discharge permits for rain runoff on logging roads. The appeals court held that the rain runoff was associated with industrial activity, so discharge permits were required. The Supreme Court held that:

Under Superfund, one party that contributed any amount of toxic waste to a large dump site could be held responsible for the entire cleanup bill.

Under the permit system of the Clean Water Act, only industries that discharge unconventional pollutants must have a permit defining the amount of each pollutant that may be discharged under the outlined technology systems stated in the permit.

In pollution cases involving strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities, courts have NOT found which of the following activities to be abnormally dangerous:

The structure of pollution laws in China is quite similar to the laws in the U.S.

Waste water that contains toxic or unconventional pollutants is subject to zero discharge technology standards.

The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines employ a carrot-and-stick approach to enforcing environmental statutes. This means that:

The manipulation of biological processes to produce organisms for commercial use is known as biotechnology and is subject to EPA rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The Toxic Substances Control Act applied to about 3,000 substances.

Which of the following things could lead to a reduction in penalties imposed on a company for violation of environmental statutes: