The Tenth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the U.S. Forest Service's (Forest Service's) approval of a timber sale project in a portion of the Ashley National Forest in Utah. The court rejected an environmental group's claim that the Forest Service failed to assess the project's impact o...

The Court of International Trade denied environmental groups' motion to preliminarily enjoin timber companies from importing bigleaf mahogany from Peru into the United States and dismissed the groups' lawsuit. The groups alleged that by importing the tree without a valid permit, the timber companies...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court decision rejecting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Fisheries' 2004 biological opinion (BO) addressing the effects of the proposed operation of Federal Columbia River Power System dams and facilities on salmon and steelhead in the lower Columbia ...

A district court upheld a lower court decision permanently enjoining defendants from discharging dredge and fill material on wetlands adjacent to tributaries of the navigable Ohio and Green rivers in Kentucky without complying with the Clean Water Act (CWA). The court rejected the defendants' argume...

The court upheld the conviction of a trailer park sewage lagoon operator for knowingly discharging a pollutant from a point source into navigable waters without a permit in violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The operator claimed that the lower court should have acquitted him because the governm...

A district court held that a landowner is liable under Clean Water Act §301 for filling wetlands without a permit. Applying Justice Kennedy's test in Rapanos v. United States, 126 S. Ct. 2208, 36 ELR 20116 (2006), the court held that the wetlands at issue are jurisdictional. The United States h...

The court reversed in part a district court decision affirming the U.S. Forest Service's authorization of six projects in four national forests in Utah. In 2000, the Forest Service substantially amended its planning rules codified at 36 C.F.R. §219. As part of the 2000 planning rules, the Fores...

A district court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in issuing four permits to fill headwater streams in conjunction with mountaintop removal coal mining. The permits would have allowed the stripping of about 3,800 acr...

The court vacated the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants for brick and ceramic kilns. The majority of the standards violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) in light of the court's previous rulings in Cement Kiln Recycling Coalition v. EP...

The court vacated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' approval of a "diversion ditch" that would be built in furtherance of a mining company's overall plan to discharge approximately 210,000 gallons of slurry per day from its mill into Lower Slate Lake, a 23-acre lake in the Tongass National Forest in...