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Save the Manatee Club v. EPA
Save the Manatee Club v. EPA ↗
6:22-cv-00868M.D. Fla., United States Federal Courts3 entries
Filing Date
Type
Action Taken
Document
Summary
10/18/2024
Motion
Plaintiff motion to alter or amend judgment filed.
Plaintiffs argue that reconsideration of the court's judgment is warranted to correct "clear error and manifest injustice arising from the Court’s determination," by not considering the legal impact of EPA's approval of not to decide the legal impact of EPA’s total maximum daily loads to conclude that the impairment of the Indian River Lagoon is not new information.
09/23/2024
Decision
Plaintiff motion for summary judgment denied, judgment in favor of Defendant.
The court ruled in favor of EPA, finding that the agency was not required to reinitiate consultation under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The federal district court of the Middle District of Florida determined that the EPA retained discretionary authority over water quality standards and that the plaintiffs failed to show that new information revealed effects of the EPA’s 2013 approval that were different or more extensive than previously considered. The court also deferred to the agency’s technical expertise, emphasizing that the ESA does not mandate re-initiation of consultation solely because of worsening environmental conditions if those conditions result from state enforcement failures rather than deficiencies in the federally approved standards. Consequently, the court ruled that the EPA’s decision was not arbitrary or capricious and entered judgment in its favor.
05/10/2022
Complaint
Complaint filed.
Three conservation groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Middle District of Florida alleging that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to reinitiate consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on the effects of water quality standards/total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for the Indian River Lagoon on the Florida manatee, green and loggerhead sea turtles, and smalltooth sawfish. The plaintiffs alleged that the Lagoon was “currently suffering ecologic collapse,” with more than thousand manatees dying in Florida in 2021, and that the “[t]he root of the problem is deteriorating water quality” due to excess nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. The complaint said EPA approved Florida’s 2009 TMDLs as water quality standards for the Lagoon in 2013 and refused a 2021 request by the FWS to reinitiate consultation based on new information about algal outbreaks killing seagrass and resulting in the starvation of manatees. The plaintiffs alleged that EPA was required to reinitiate consultation in response to new information about the connection between the pollution and the mass manatee die-off, as well as other new information, including information about lack of compliance with or enforcement of TMDLs and about the failure of TMDLs to account for the impacts of climate change.