The Ninth Circuit denied a petition challenging the FAA's decision that no EIS was necessary to commence operating commercial passenger service at an industrial airport near Everett, Washington. The FAA prepared an EA, but chose not to prepare an EIS following its finding of no significant environme...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to close to domestic sheep grazing approximately 70% of allotments on which grazing had been permitted in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The Forest Service's decision was made in response to concerns about disease transmission to imm...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow motorized vehicles on just 62 of 869 miles of user-created roads and trails in the Tahoe National Forest. To implement the 2005 Travel Management Rule in the Tahoe National Forest, the Forest Service pre...

A district court, on motions for summary judgment, dismissed all but one of a property owner's environmental, waste, and breach of lease claims against various manufacturing companies that leased the site. The owner has been leasing the property since 1972, but it has largely been an absentee landlo...

A district court held that New York may seek response costs and natural resource damages under CERCLA in connection with a contaminated industrial site in Long Island, a portion of which was listed on the NPL in 2011. The state's past response actions at the site were consistent with the national co...

A district court dismissed a company's declaratory judgment action concerning its liability for cleanup costs that EPA incurred at the Hudson Oil Refinery Superfund site in Cushing, Oklahoma. The company owned and operated the site from 1943 to 1977, when it sold the refinery to the current owner. I...

A district court held that the owner of a contaminated property that was once the site of a paper mill may not seek response costs from a company that had purchased the assets of the prior owner of the mill. The owner argued that the company was liable under CERCLA under a de facto merger theory of ...

A district court held that a 2014 settlement agreement between a spinoff company, the U.S. government, an energy company, and its parent bars over 4,300 individuals from bringing Pennsylvania tort claims arising from the operation of a wood treatment plant formerly owned and operated by the spinoff'...

A district court held that OSM violated NEPA when it approved a mining plan amendment that would expand a coal mine in Montana, and ordered the agency to prepare an updated EA within 240 days. Specifically, the court held that OSM violated NEPA's public participation and notice provisions when it fa...