WildEarth Guardians v. Bureau of Land Management
A district court held that environmental groups' NEPA and FLPMA claims against BLM in connection with its decision to lease two coal tracts in Wyoming's Powder River Basin lack merit. The groups alleged that BLM violated the statutes because the agency failed to adequately consider the impacts on lo...
Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada v. U.S. Department of the Interior
The Ninth Circuit held that BLM did not violate NEPA or FLPMA when it approved the expansion of a gold mine near Nevada's Mount Tenabo. Native American tribes claimed that BLM failed to address mitigation measures specific to groundwater in situ, failed to propose new mitigation measures relating to...
Catskill Mountains Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency
In a 100+ page opinion, a district court vacated EPA's water transfers rule, which excludes water transfers that convey or connect "waters of the United States without subjecting the transferred water to intervening industrial, municipal, or commercial use" from the CWA's NPDES permitting requiremen...
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Ass'ns v. Murillo
A district court held that plaintiffs may go forward with their CWA citizen suit against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and a California water authority in a case involving the need for a NPDES permit for an irrigation project jointly administered by the two agencies. The plaintiffs pled sufficient ...