Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/law/page/2/)
A federal judge has slapped a Western Pennsylvania copper-processing company with a $550,000 fine for its years-long criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, including illegal discharging of oil into the Ohio River.
By Eric Freedman
Jennifer Cook initially got along amicably with her neighbors in rural Bartholomew County, Indiana. But that relationship went downhill when the neighbors, Brian and Katrina Brumley, bought a Great Pyrenees puppy to protect their poultry, goats, miniature horse and miniature donkey from coyotes, foxes and bobcats, according to legal documents in Cook’s unsuccessful appeal of her stalking conviction for harassing the Brumleys with recorded animal noises. The dog, which reached 130 pounds, sometimes broke free of its restraints, ran loose, defecated in Cook’s yard and barked while confined, but it didn’t bite anyone or act aggressively, the Indiana Court of Appeals said in a recent opinion. “In an effort to muffle the barking, the Brumleys tried moving the dog to various areas on the property farther from Cook’s house,” the court said. To no avail.
A roadside zoo in Charlestown, Indiana, has violated the Endangered Species Act by declawing Big Cats – tigers, lions and hybrids – “without a medical necessity” and separating cubs as young as 1 day old from their mothers, a federal judge has ruled.
A federal judge in Ohio has sentenced an illegal slaughterhouse operator to 33 months behind bars for dumping animal blood and other “bodily fluids” into a waterway that empties into Beaver Creek and Lake Erie in violation of the Clean Water Act.
A federal judge recently banned the Indiana host of a former hunting television show from hunting for 30 months after he illegally shot a trophy buck.
Prosecutors alleged that the men took nestlings from a nest in northern Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and from another nest on state land.
Two men in Manistee County recently shot what they said they believed to be a goose. Their mistake may cost them $5,000 in fines and up to a year in prison.
Michael Ward failed to alert his supervisors at the APC Paper Group mill in Norfolk that the mill was exceeding the maximum daily level of discharges allowed under its state permit.
Three Wisconsin duck hunting guides let clients exceed their daily bag limit in the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
It’s the third time in six years that the legislation has been pushed. And opponents fear this time there may be enough political will to pass it.