Gwaltney, 484 U.S. at 66 (quoting Concentrated Phosphate Export Ass'n, 393 U.S. at 203) (emphasis added by the Court in Gwaltney). WebACE is the Mid-Atlantics premier builder of water infrastructure projects. 183). ARGUMENT The Court of Appeals Erred In Holding That A Citizen Suit Must Be Dismissed As Moot Unless The Citizen Plaintiff Obtains Injunctive Relief The court of appeals' ruling that petitioners' citizen suit is moot rests on a misunderstanding of the Clean Water Act's citizen-enforcement provisions and this Court's mootness jurisprudence. Co., 385 U.S. 533, 535 (1967) (directing that "the District Court should determine in the first instance the effect of an intervening event upon the appropriateness of injunctive relief"); Stern, supra, at 257. The doctrine of mootness, by contrast, requires a court to discontinue its exercise of judicial power if it determines that a live case or controversy no longer exists in light of changed circumstances. It directs that the court may impose a maximum penalty of $25,000 per day of violation and that, when assessing the penalty, the court shall consider "the seriousness of the violation or violations, the economic benefit (if any) resulting from the violation, any history of such violations, any good-faith efforts to comply with the applicable requirements, the economic impact of the penalty on the violator, and such other matters as justice may require." This Court's decision in Gwaltney rested on a determination that Congress intended to authorize citizens to initiate suit only to abate violations and compel compliance. Data inaccuracies may exist. WebIn Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.}0 envi-ronmental groups brought action against Laidlaw, a NPDES permit holder, pursuant to the citizen suit provision17 of the Clean Water Act.18 The plaintiff organizations alleged that Laidlaw had failed to comply with its United States District Court, D. Massachusetts. The district court did not treat petitioners' claims against Laidlaw as moot. WebHistorically Laidlaw Waste and Laidlaw Environmental Services have been subsidiaries of Laidlaw, Inc., which in turn is a 47.5% owned subsidiary of Canadian Pacific. at 610-611 (J.A. Finally, we show why the court of appeals erred in holding that, because the district court denied injunctive relief, the petitioners' enforcement action is moot.4 A. FOE appealed as to the amount of the District Court's civil penalty judgment, but did not appeal the denial of declaratory or injunctive relief. Id. at 611 (J.A. 7a-9a. District Court found that Laidlaw had gained a total economic benefit of $1,092,581 as a result of its extended period of noncompliance with the permit's mercury discharge limit; nevertheless, the court concluded that a civil penalty of $405,800 was appropriate. 33 U.S.C. Inc The Court has indicated that those mootness principles apply to Clean Water Act citizen suits. The court refused to grant petitioners' request for injunctive relief, reasoning that an injunction was inappropriate because "Laidlaw has been in substantial compliance with all parameters in its NPDES permit since at least August 1992." In Romero-Barcelo, citizens demanded an injunction to abate government discharges of ordnance, which qualified as a pollutant under the Clean Water Act. The Court has applied mootness principles in a practical manner when defendants facing injunctive remedies urge that their voluntary cessation of allegedly unlawful actions renders the case moot. Petitioners Friends of the Earth, Inc., Citizens Local Environmental Action Network, Inc., and the Sierra Club brought this citizen suit against respondent Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc., to enjoin Laidlaw's violations of its Clean Water Act permit. The company has also been subjectto several. Penalized $30,000 for unauthorized emissions from their incinerator's stacks. Organizing Tip-For all intents and purposes, Laidlaw's trackrecord is still relevant since the same management will be probably beoperating the facilities. Although the court of appeals appears wrong in suggesting that petitioners are not entitled to recover their litigation costs, that matter should be addressed, if it becomes necessary, through the proceedings on remand. Syllabus Pet. No. Cal. An NPDES permit also typically imposes monitoring and reporting obligations, which require the facility to measure its discharges at prescribed times and document those measurements through publicly available discharge monitoring reports (DMRs). A district court can properly conclude that the prospect of recurrence is not so small as to moot a case, but is sufficiently unlikely to warrant denial of injunctive relief. THE LAW OF WORDS: STANDING, ENVIRONMENT, AND Signed a consent decree with the state to close and clean GSX toxic wastesite- five years later, the soil is still contaminated. But if the court of appeals nevertheless believed that Laidlaw's "voluntary" compliance, by itself, may have eliminated any reasonable prospect of future violations, then the court of appeals should have remanded the case to the district court for an express finding on that matter. Fined $22,500 for hazardous waste burning violations discovered duringa 1990 inspection. Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental