The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had the legal authority to retroactively veto a water pollution permit for one of West Virginia's largest mountaintop removal coal mines years after it was issued, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed a lower court's ruling in a case that has economic implications across coal country and potentially the nation. The case goes back to U.S. District Court for further proceedings.

The appellate court directed Judge Amy Berman Jackson to address the coal industry's argument that the EPA's action was an "arbitrary and capricious" violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, an issue she has not previously ruled on.

The holder of the permit, St. Louis-based Arch Coal, said it was disappointed in the ruling, but downplayed it as being "related to procedural aspects" of the case.

A federal appeals court says government regulators can try to halt construction projects at power plants if they think the companies didn't properly calculate whether the changes would increase air pollution.
   
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued DTE Energy in 2010 because the company replaced key boiler parts at its Monroe Unit 2 without installing pollution controls that are required whenever a utility performs a major overhaul. DTE said the project was only routine maintenance.
   
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman threw out the suit, saying EPA went to court too soon.
   
But the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his decision Thursday. In a 2-1 ruling, the court says the law doesn't block EPA from challenging suspected violations of its regulations until long after power plants are modified.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency is overestimating the amount of fuel that can be produced from grasses, wood and other nonfood plants in an effort to promote a fledgling biofuels industry.

At issue is a 2007 renewable fuels law that requires a certain amount of those types of fuels, called cellulosic biofuels, to be mixed in with gasoline each year. Despite annual EPA projections that the industry would produce small amounts of the biofuels, none of that production materialized.

There have been high hopes in Washington that the cellulosic industry would take off as farmers, food manufacturers and others blamed the skyrocketing production of corn ethanol fuel for higher food prices. Those groups said the diversion of corn crops for fuel production raised prices for animal feed and eventually for consumers at the grocery store. Lawmakers hoped that nonfood sources like switchgrass or corn husks could be used instead, though the industry hadn't yet gotten off the ground.

The 2007 law mandated that billions of gallons of annual production of corn ethanol be mixed with gasoline, eventually transitioning those annual requirements to include more of the nonfood, cellulosic materials to produce the biofuels. As criticism of ethanol has increased, lawmakers and even Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have talked of the cellulosic materials as the future of biofuels.

The Supreme Court won't hear a challenge to a tough new clean air requirement limiting sulfur dioxide emissions.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from businesses and industrial interests involving an Environmental Protection Agency regulation setting emission levels of sulfur dioxide, a colorless gas with the smell of rotting eggs. Sulfur dioxide from power plant smokestacks can be carried long distances by wind and weather and has been linked to various illnesses including asthma.

Several corporations and industrial associations along with several states say that EPA's required emission levels are lower than mandated by law to protect public health. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to overturn the EPA's decision.

The justices refused to reconsider that ruling.

The Kansas Supreme Court this month will consider a challenge by environmental groups to a state permit for construction of a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant in southwest Kansas.

The high court will hear oral arguments Aug. 31 in Topeka on the validity of the state permit issued in 2010 to start construction of the 895-megawatt plant near Holcomb, according to The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Sierra Club and Earthjustice contend in the lawsuit that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment improperly granted regulatory approval to the project, which they say is unnecessarily damaging to the environment. The organizations want the permit overturned.

Development partners Sunflower Electric Power Corp., of Hays, and Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association maintain that the state's permit is sound.


The Sunflower project has been on indefinite hold. In January, a federal judge delayed the project until a federal environmental impact study could be completed.

Sunflower spokeswoman Cindy Hertel said the cooperative's management would not comment before the state Supreme Court's review. Sunflower serves 400,000 people in Kansas, but most of the new electricity would be transferred to other states.

A federal judge has signed off on a transition process that relieves Kenneth Feinberg of his duties as administrator of BP's $20 billion compensation fund for victims of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thursday's order by U.S District Judge Carl Barbier calls for a court-supervised administrator to take over the claims process from the Feinberg-led Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

The move is part of a proposed multibillion-dollar settlement between BP and plaintiffs' attorneys representing more than 100,000 individuals and businesses.

The judge appointed Lynn Greer, a Richmond, Virginia-based attorney, to fill in for Feinberg during the transition. Patrick Juneau, a Lafayette-based attorney, will take over for Greer and serve as the court-appointed administrator for economic loss claims if the judge gives preliminary approval to the settlement.

U.S. air carriers failed Wednesday to block an EU law charging airlines flying to Europe for their carbon pollution, yielding to a sweeping measure intended to curb climate-changing emissions from international aviation.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg dismissed arguments that imposing the European Union's cap-and-trade program on flights to and from European airports infringes on national sovereignty or violates international aviation treaties.

The lawsuit was brought by U.S. and Canadian airlines acting through the industry trade organization Airlines for America, but the protest was supported by China, India and other countries with international carriers.

The U.S. airlines said the regulation was tantamount to "an exorbitant tax," but the EU said the added costs would amount to a few dollars per ticket and would open the way for efficient airlines to make money rather than lose.

The carbon trading program, due to go into effect Jan. 1, is one of the widest-reaching measures adopted by any country or regional bloc to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. It aims to make airlines accountable for their carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming.