ALERT files Motion for Summary Judgment

April 20, 2021

April 20, 2021.  ALERT asked the court for summary judgment in our favor on the matter of the EPA’s unreasonable delay over finalizing rules governing dispersant use. We are also asking for injunctive relief – a Court order – to issue a proposed new rule within 90 days of the Court order, with the hope that EPA…

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Court Rejects Reconsideration: Stays the Course

September 1, 2020

  September 1, 2020.  The District Court rejected EPA’s motion to reconsider its motion to dismiss the court’s earlier landmark ruling that required EPA to keep the nation’s oil spill response plans current and effective. In the September ruling, the Judge wrote that “EPA’s arguments amount to an improper repetition of the arguments that it made…

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EPA stalls case

July 22, 2020

  EPA filed a motion requesting that Judge Orrick reconsider his reasoned ruling on our Clean Water Act claim. EPA claimed that the Judge did not specifically address various issues it raised in its motion to dismiss our case. However, the Judge’s written opinion and the hearing transcripts both show that these issues were in…

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InsideEPA: District Court Says Water Law Requires EPA To Update Oil Spill Rules.

June 3, 2020

According to Inside EPA, “A federal court in California has agreed with environmentalists that EPA has a nondiscretionary duty under the Clean Water Act (CWA) to update its rules governing oil spills in order to better regulate dispersants, relying in part on a landmark appellate decision that found EPA had unduly delayed updating its lead…

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ALERT v. EPA makes law! Ruling a “game-changer”

June 2, 2020

June 2, 2020. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Orrick ruled that the Clean Water Act requires the EPA to keep the nation’s oil spill response plans current and effective. New research has linked chemical dispersants, heavily used during the 2010 BP spill response, with long-term illnesses in humans and wildlife. The EPA has failed to consider…

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ALERT announces lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency

February 13, 2020

  After eight years of preparation and waiting, The ALERT Project has officially sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its outdated National Contingency Plan, the nation’s emergency response plan for oil spills.  The Plan was last updated in 1994 – 26 years ago.  Oil companies are supposed to have viable plans to respond…

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ALERT takes new legal action with the EPA

April 7, 2019

It’s said that maritime law is written in blood or oil—after disasters rather than before them. The same can be said of our nation’s emergency oil and chemical disaster response plan, the National Contingency Plan (NCP or the Plan).Our campaign to ban toxic dispersants from use during oil spill response started after the Exxon Valdez disaster…

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