A district court granted a motion to transfer the West Virginia environmental agency's action against EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers challenging their permitting processes for coal mining to the D.C. District Court for consolidation with another case filed by a mining industry trad...
A district court upheld the FWS' biological opinion and the U.S. Forest Service's EIS and record of decision for the Idaho Roadless Rule. The court therefore denied environmental groups' request to enjoin the rule and replace it with the nationwide roadless rule that was enacted in 2001. The...
The Ninth Circuit amended dicta set forth in its prior opinion at 40 ELR 20233, which held that property owners and three employees of the California Department of Fish and Game did not violate the ESA when they dug up and removed Sebastopol meadowfoam—an endangered plant species—from privately ...
A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging a city's approval of a project to build 560 residential units on a 200-acre site long used for agricultural purposes. A citizens group filed a petition, claiming that the environmental impact report (...
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision validating $650 million in "certificates of participation" to finance a water district's purchase of 73,000 acres of land owned by a sugar company for Everglades restoration purposes. Certificates of pa...
A district court denied various states' motion to issue a preliminary injunction compelling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take all available measures to prevent the emigration of invasive silver and bighead carp through the Chicago Area Waterway System into Lake Michigan. In the face of multia...
The Ninth Circuit held that FWS' biological opinion addressing a hatchery project's impact on the bull trout in the Columbia River violates the ESA. Although the hatchery project is intended to mitigate a dam's impacts on Chinook salmon, it has seriously disrupted the migration and spawning activity...
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of an environmental group requiring the USDA, under FOIA, to disclose the GPS coordinates of wolf depredations to which it had responded. The district court held that the coordinates were not exempt from disclosure...
A district court dismissed a motion to dismiss environmental groups' citizen suit against five coal companies alleging thousands of violations of the CWA and SMCRA in West Virginia. Because EPA entered into a consent decree with the companies, the defendants argued that the groups' CWA claim...
The Supreme Court of Texas, on certification from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, held that Texas does not recognize a "rolling" public beachfront access easement on Galveston's West Beach. Land patents from the Republic of Texas in 1840, affirmed by legislation in the new s...