The Tenth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that the DOT did not violate NEPA by approving two highway improvement plans since the record of decision supplied a rational connection between the facts and the DOT's decision, and because the EIS indicated that the DOT took the required "hard look...

The Fifth Circuit granted an environmental group's petition for review of a revised SIP for the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ozone nonattainment area in which EPA approved reductions outside the Baton Rouge area as a substitute contingency measure. EPA's approval of the contingency measure was a reasonab...

The Eighth Circuit upheld a district court decision granting summary judgment to the National Park Service (NPS) on an association's complaint seeking to enjoin the NPS' decision to open 11 bays of the Voyageurs National Park to recreational snowmobile use. The NPS did not decide to open the bays to...

The Seventh Circuit reversed a district court decision dismissing environmental group's Clean Water Act citizen suit against a local sewerage district. The group's claim concerned sanitary sewer overflows that occurred between 1994 and 2001 in violation of the state's pretreatment standards for wast...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court's dismissal of an environmental group's challenge to the validity of U.S. Forest Service timber sales under NEPA and the National Forest Management Act on res judicata grounds. The current complaint alleges the same causes of action stemming from the same nuc...

The Tenth Circuit reversed a lower court decision to reinstate three oil and gas leases, previously denied by the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA), because the BLM failed to comply with NEPA. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) concluded that two existing the National Environmental Policy Act (...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a district court decision dismissing environmental groups' challenge to a timber harvest approved by the U.S. Forest Service as part of a watershed restoration project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. The Forest Service failed to take the requisite "hard look" under...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a district court decision that the Forest Service violated NEPA when it issued multiyear special-use permits and granted renewals of special-use permits to commercial packstock operators in the John Muir and Ansel Adams Wilderness Areas. The Forest Service clearly breached i...

The Eighth Circuit affirmed a district court decision that the U.S. Forest Service's decision to approve harvesting timber in the Mark Twain National Forest did not violate NEPA or the ESA. The Forest Service did not act arbitrarily and capriciously in determining that the project would have no sign...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision to find that biological opinions issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on timber harvests and critical habitat for the northern spotted owl improperly relied on an unlawful regulatory definition of "adverse modification" and impermissibl...