Natural Resources Defense Council v. Richardon, Civ. No. 97-308 (D.D.C.)
Case Summary:
On behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, we challenged the Departmentof Energy's failure to comply with a 1990 Court Order, which obligated the Department to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) concerning environmental restoration activities at defense nuclear facilities around the country. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order to show cause why the Department should not be held in contempt for failing to prepare the PEIS, and allowed us to take extensive discovery. As a result, we reached a sweeping settlement with DOE, which, among other commitments, obligated the Department to create a new, publicly accessible database on radioactive materials stored at defense nuclear facilities, and to spend more than $6 million funding research by citizen groups into conditions at such facilities.
Plaintiffs: Natural Resources Defense Council, Dr. Thomas Cochran, Western States Legal Foundation, and Tri-Valley Cares
Court: United States District Court for the District of Columbia