A California appellate court upheld a county's approval of a sand and gravel mining pit along a riverbed. An environmental group seeking to overturn the approval argued that the environmental impact report (EIR) that formed the basis of the county's decision violated the California Environmental Qua...

The Ninth Circuit held that BLM complied with NEPA and FLPMA when it allowed a uranium mine to resume operations, after a 17-year hiatus, under a plan of operations the agency approved in 1988. Environmental groups argued that the 1988 plan of operations became ineffective after the mine closed in t...

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition challenging the Surface Transportation Board's (STB's) decision to grant an exemption and authorize a railroad company to build railroad line extension between Port MacKenzie and Wasilla, Alaska. The proposed rail line will pass through the waters and wetlands of ...

The Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the NRC in a case challenging its grant of an exemption to the Indian Point nuclear power plant from compliance with certain fire safety regulations. Environmental and citizens groups filed ...

A district court, in a 114-page opinion, held that a regional planning agency violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it approved the expansion of a ski resort near Lake Tahoe. The evidence fails to support the agency's finding that a reduced alternative was not economically infeasibl...

A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service violated its travel management rule, but not NEPA, when it issued its record of decision approving the Stanislaus National Forest Motorized Travel Management EIS. The agency looked at a reasonable range of alternatives to the proposed action, proper...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's adoption of the Idaho Roadless Rule, which creates different categories of land within Idaho's 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. The court affirmed and adopted as its own a lower court ruling that also approved the rule. FWS's biologi...

The Tenth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing environmental groups' case challenging decisions made by BLM and the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) concerning the legality of 39 oil and gas leases in southern Utah. In the 1980s, the owner of the leases applied to have its oil and...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a conservation group's petition seeking to vacate a city's certification of an environmental impact report (EIR) for the development of a park. The group argued that the EIR wrongly defined the project to exclude pending residentia...

A district court granted an environmental group's motion to preliminarily enjoin the logging of 11 timber sales and to halt any further logging activities in known occupied marbled murrelet sites in Oregon's Tillamook, Clatsop, and Elliot state forests. Defendants argued that the case was moot becau...