The D.C. Circuit upheld EPA's revised NESHAPs for secondary lead smelting facilities. In 2012, acting pursuant to CAA §§112(d)(6) and 112(f)(2), EPA revised the 1995 emissions standards for secondary lead smelting facilities, reducing allowable emissions by 90% and requiring smelters to totally en...

A district court dismissed a city's lawsuit against California state and local air districts challenging fees it must pay to mitigate wind-blown dust from a dry lake bed that exceed state and federal air standards. Section 42316 of the California Health and Safety Code authorized the district to ord...

The Ninth Circuit held that a court may not approve a consent decree that substantially and permanently amends regulations that the agency could only otherwise amend by complying with statutory rulemaking procedures. The consent decree at issue in the case arose from a settlement between environment...

The Ninth Circuit, in an amended opinion, denied an environmental group's petition challenging EPA's decision to grant two air permits authorizing exploratory drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean by a drillship and its associated fleet of support vessels. The permits require the drillship to comp...

The Federal Circuit reversed the dismissal of landowners "rails to trails" takings claims against the government. The landowners alleged that the government's issuance of a Notice of Interim Trail Use or Abandonment (NITU) in 2006 constituted a compensable Fifth Amendment taking because it operated ...

A district court dismissed as untimely Alaska's lawsuit challenging the 2001 roadless rule, which prohibits roadwork and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forest, including 14.7 million acres of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in Alaska. Alaska's cause of action accrued in...