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...

The Washington state Shorelines Hearing Board denied plans to build a methanol refinery on the Columbia River because the plans failed to adequately consider greenhouse gas emissions. A manufacturing company proposed to manufacture methanol from natural gas supplied by a lateral pipeline, with the m...

A district court ordered EPA to issue infrastructure requirements for the 2012 fine particulate matter NAAQS for five states within 90 days. In 2015, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island missed their deadlines to present compliance plans for the 2012 fine p...

The Ninth Circuit held that a trial court did not err in not allowing evidence of the defendant's diminished mental capacity in a case involving a criminal conviction under RCRA. The defendant was sentenced to 46 months in prison for storing more than 3,000 containers of paint and paint-related mate...

A district court ruled that a manufacturing company will not be required to conduct further investigation of contamination that is already subject to a remediation agreement. In 2010, a consent agreement between the manufacturing company and a golf course owner obligated the company to perform remed...

A district court denied EPA's request to amend a 2012 consent decree obligating the Agency to approve state regional haze plans. In 2011, environmental groups sued the Agency to compel it to take action on nine states' regional haze plans. Under a consent decree, EPA was given until September 9, 201...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a 2014 EPA settlement that required the Agency to set a phased schedule for it to issue air quality designations as required by a 2010 sulfur dioxide NAAQS. In 2013, when EPA missed the statutory deadline to issue its designations under the CAA, environmental groups sued to ...