A Pennsylvania court affirmed a lower court decision dismissing residents' and an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the construction of a natural gas pipeline through a suburban township. The plaintiffs argued that a local zoning ordinance prohibits the construction of hazardous gas and liqu...

The Ninth Circuit held that Maui County is liable for illegally discharging treated wastewater that seeped through groundwater into the Pacific Ocean. The County owns and operates four wells at the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility (“LWRF”), the principal municipal wastewater treatment pla...

A district court held that an energy company must follow additional safety measures operating the Dakota Access pipeline while the environmental impacts of the project are being studied. In an earlier decision, the court held that the Dakota Access pipeline could continue to operate while the Army C...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the criminal conviction of a Montana resident for violations of the CWA. The resident was sentenced to 18 months in prison and had to pay a $130,000 fine for digging ponds and diverting a creek onto his land in Montana and the neighboring Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest...

The Sixth Circuit held that the state of Ohio did not properly analyze the environmental harm of an eight-mile stretch of the Nexus natural gas pipeline or consider alternative routes to avoid the City of Green. The pipeline would run through a wetland that the city claimed would be irreparably harm...

A California appellate court held that a project to modify an oil refinery so it can unload the equivalent of 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day should not proceed until corrections can be made to its state environmental impact report (EIR). The project proposed transporting crude oil from the Bak...

A district court held that a lawsuit challenging the Keystone XL pipeline can continue despite calls from the federal government to dismiss the case. On April 4, 2017, the State Department approved a presidential permit for the pipeline. In its approval, the State Department relied on a 2014 EIS con...

The Tenth Circuit held that a Wyoming law that imposed civil and criminal liability on those who cross private property to access adjacent land to collect resource data violates the First Amendment. In 2015, Wyoming enacted a pair of statutes that prohibited individuals from entering “open land fo...