A district court preliminarily enjoined the California transportation agency's proposal to widen a highway that runs through old-growth redwood trees in Richardson Grove State Park. Environmental groups challenged the project under NEPA, the Department of Transportation Act, the Wild and Scenic Rive...

A district court dismissed environmental groups' suit for declaratory and injunctive relief challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' nationwide permitting program, and, specifically, its use throughout the Appalachian region to issue permits for mining activities. The groups alleged CWA, N...

The D.C. Circuit vacated the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS') methodology for tracking bycatch in the fisheries off the Northeastern coast of the United States. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, as amended by the Sustainable Fisheries Act, requires the NMF...

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld the state environmental agency's decision to issue a permit to a town for a municipal well. Two groups challenged the agency's decision to issue the permit without considering the well's potential impact on nearby Lake Beulah, a navigable water. A circuit c...

A district court held that environmental groups may pursue a RCRA claim against the current and former owners of a steel mill for disposing of hazardous waste without a permit, but dismissed the groups' remaining RCRA and CWA claims. The groups' claims that the mill has released and continues t...

The Ninth Circuit held that a seafood processor association may not intervene in environmental groups' lawsuit challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service's program to preserve groundfish species off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. A lower court denied the association's m...

The Eleventh Circuit held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may allocate storage water in Lake Lanier, a reservoir created in 1956 by the completion of Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee River, for water supply. A lower court ruled that the Corps' current operation of the Buford Project—Buford Da...

The Federal Circuit upheld a lower court decision rejecting landowners' claims that the United States had taken their property without just compensation by erecting a log boom that prevented them from using a slough next to their property. The government placed the log boom in the slough to ...

A Texas appellate court reversed and remanded a $550,019 judgment awarded to property owners in their suit against a neighboring convenience store for damages stemming from a leaking UST. The evidence was legally sufficient to show that the gasoline migrated from the store's property to the plai...

California's highest court upheld a regional water board's issuance of a NPDES permit authorizing a power plant to draw cooling water from an adjacent harbor and slough. An environmental group filed suit, claiming that the permit did not satisfy the "best technology available" requirement of CWA...