A district court held that a township's Home Rule Charter prohibiting deposition of any waste from oil and gas extraction within the township and invalidating any state permit to the contrary was preempted by the SDWA. In 2014, EPA granted an oil company a permit for an underground injection control...

A district court held an Alabama industrial park owner can't pursue claims against the federal government for damage to its property that occurred during a Superfund cleanup. As part of the cleanup, EPA disposed of, cut, severed, tore up from the ground, and removed roughly 1,400 feet of track owned...

A district court held that a group of North Dakota property owners could not sue contractors hired to negotiate easements for the Dakota Access pipeline for misrepresentation and fraud. The contractors were hired to obtain easements from property owners to secure a path for the Dakota Access pipelin...

A district court held that the Dakota Access pipeline can continue to operate while the Army Corps of Engineers corrects deficiencies in its EA for the project. In an earlier decision, the court held that the Corps did not adequately consider the consequences of a spill for the plaintiff tribe's fis...

A district court held that BLM violated the APA when it postponed compliance with Obama-era greenhouse gas emission rules. Several states and tribal citizen groups brought suit against BLM when it published a notice in the Federal Register postponing compliance dates for certain sections of the Wast...

A district court held that a tribal appellate court had the authority to impose permit fees on an operator of a phosphorus production plant. The plant sits on 1,450 acres of land lying mostly within Shoshone-Bannock Fort Hall Reservation, and produced 22 million tons of waste stored on the reservati...

An Illinois appellate court held that owners of an apartment building tainted by a leaky underground gasoline storage tank should have been allowed to join cleanup litigation brought by the state. The state sued two oil companies for a 2014 spill that contaminated soil and groundwater. The spill cre...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a district court decision that allocated 100% liability under CERCLA to a government contractor seeking contribution from the U.S. government. For 60 years the contractor operated a manufacturing facility where it manufactured aircrafts primarily for the U.S. government. F...

The Ninth Circuit held that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act did not limit the Park Service from applying the hovercraft ban on the Nation River in the Yukon-Charley preserve. A plaintiff sought to use his hovercraft in a national preserve to reach moose hunting grounds. While sta...

The Fifth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) safety regulations do not apply to contractors, subcontractors or service providers. The case concerned a fatal explosion during "hot work" on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed three workers ...