The Fourth Circuit, in an unpublished decision, vacated FWS' incidental take statement that authorized a pipeline project along the Atlantic coast to take certain threatened or endangered species. The limits set by the agency were so indeterminate that they undermined the incidental take statement's...

The D.C. Circuit vacated EPA's placement of the West Vermont Drinking Water Contamination site, a site of groundwater contamination beneath Indianapolis, Indiana, on the NPL. EPA used the hazard ranking system (HRS) to determine whether listing was appropriate. As part of that process, EPA assessed ...

A Federal Claims court held that the Surface Transportation Board (STB) temporarily took landowners' property without just compensation for use as an interim trail under the National Trails System Act. The landowners' predecessors-in-interest sold right-of-way easements to a railroad for operation o...

A district court held that a city council breached a development agreement for a proposed export terminal when it passed an ordinance that banned coal operations at "bulk materials facilities" as well as a resolution that applied the ban to the proposed terminal. The development agreement froze in p...

The court affirms in part and reverses in part the Federal Subsistence Board's decision to impose an antler restriction on subsistence uses of moose in game management unit (GMU) 15 on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. The court first holds that the board's reading of the term priority within the meaning...

The court affirms a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Appeals Board decision upholding an administrative law judge's (ALJ's) $1.345 million penalty assessment, less an amount paid in settlement by a co-defendant, against the former owner and operator of a recycling plant that ...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction enjoining California Department of Public Health officials from enforcing the California Medical Waste Management Act (MWMA) against a medical waste facility with regard to how it disposes of medical waste at facilities outside the state. The facilit...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a Native American tribe in a lawsuit seeking to enjoin the DOI's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from taking a parcel of land into trust for the tribe so it could build a casino and hotel complex. Following the BIA's dec...

A district court dismissed an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), under which Congress recently passed a resolution disapproving an FWS rule that prohibited certain hunting and trapping practices on National Wildlife Refuges in Alask...

The court affirms a district court dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction of a state and town's suit alleging that the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is unconstitutional. Under SDWA §1448, a petition for review of an SDWA regulation must be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C....