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Mercury Study of Lower Penobscot River
Will Proceed
The First Circuit Court of Appeals has turned away a
challenge to a multi-million dollar study of the lower Penobscot
River in Maine
to determine whether mercury-laden waste discharged at Orrington since the
1960’s by several owners of a chlor-alkali
plant, in fact, adversely affects human health and the environment. Mallinckrodt, Inc., the owner of the
plant, had challenged the trial court’s ability to order the study,
in large part, because of the absence of “imminent and substantial
risk of harm” as required by the federal RCRA statute. In its first decision addressing the
reach of the so-called “citizen suit” provision of RCRA, the
Court of Appeals found that “a reasonable prospect of future
harm” is adequate to allow for relief, so long as the threat is
near-term and involves potentially serious harm.
Maine
People’s Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Counsel v.Mallinckrodt, Inc. No. 05-2331
Development of $2 Billion North Point Project Must
Undergo Tidelands Review
The owners of the 48-acre North Point Project in Cambridge
must apply for a license under the State’s tidelands statute, G.L.
91, as a result of the Supreme Judicial Court’s
invalidation of the landlocked tidelands exemption in 310 Code Mass. Regs. § 904(2). The SJC found that G.L. 91 contained
no language indicating the legislature’s intent to relinquish or
extinguish the public’s right to any tidelands, filled or unfilled,
landlocked or otherwise. The
decision will have implications for numerous waterfront developments in Massachusetts.
Moot v. Department of Environmental
Protection, SJC - 09774
When is a Resubdivision
Only a Subdivision?
A planning board’s denial of an application to
build a residential project on land that was previously subdivided for a
commercial development was reversed by a unanimous N.H. Supreme Court
decision. Rejecting the
Town of Wilmot’s argument that the second application was
inconsistent with the original approval, the Court found that the statutory
definition of “subdivision” subsumes “resubdivision”
and that, absent any law to the contrary, the two should be subject to identical
standards. The Court concurred
with the developer that the proper test for the Planning Board was whether
or not the new proposal satisfied local zoning and subdivision
requirements.
Feins
v. Town of Wilmot, No. 2005-832
NELSON, KINDER, MOSSEAU & SATURLEY, P.C.
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