South Carolina's highest court held that the state's environmental agency violated state law when it negotiated an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Georgia Ports Authority before issuing a CWA §401 water quality certificate for a proposed expansion project for Savannah Harbor...

A Texas appellate court held that sovereign immunity bars an individual's lawsuit against the board members of a local reclamation district claiming that their activities caused a lake to be substantially drained during 2008 and for most of the years 2009 through 2011. As a governmental agency and p...

A California appellate court held that a water control board order that regulates waste from existing milk cow dairies violates the state's antidegradation policy. The order prohibits the further degradation of groundwater, as is required by the state’s antidegradation policy, but it does not proh...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision prohibiting the inclusion of styrene and vinyl acetate as possible carcinogens on the state's Proposition 65 list. The Proposition 65 list is limited to chemicals for which it has been determined, either by the Office of Environmental Heal...

A California appellate court held that a city council may not skip California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review for a development project by using Election Code §9214(a) to approve the project via a voter petition instead of holding an election under §9214(b). When a development project is a...

An Indiana appeals court reversed the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission's approval of a purchase and sales agreement for "substitute natural gas" an energy company plans to produce at its new coal gasification plant. The contract meets the common law definition of an enforceable contract. It als...

The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of two lawsuits challenging a Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) directive directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take "prudential actions" to protect themselves against risks raised by Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs that impose priority- o...

A California appellate court held that a city's certification of an environmental impact report (EIR) for a development project covering 2,600 acres of undeveloped land for single-family dwelling units and a village center violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Below, the trial co...