Green, City of v. Nexus Gas Transmission, LLC
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...
Assoc. of Irritated Residents v. Kern County Board of Supervisors
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...
Earth Island Institute v. Elliot
A district court held that a Forest Service fire salvage restoration project could proceed despite its risk to protected species. The Cedar Fire began on August 16, 2016, and burned for three weeks over 29,000 acres of mixed conifer and white fir forest, most of which were in the Sequoia National Fo...
Cascadia Wildlands v. Scott Timber Co.
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of an injunction to halt a logging project in Oregon. A conservation group brought a citizen suit under the ESA challenging a logging project it claimed would result in the taking of the marbled murrelet, a seabird listed as a threatened species. The ...
Indigenous Environmental Network v. TransCanada Corp.
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...
Mayo v. National Park Service
The D.C. Circuit held that the Park Service did not violate NEPA when it authorized recreational hunts of elk in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. The Grand Teton and the National Elk Refuge (Refuge) are home to the “Jackson herd,” one of the largest concentrations of elk in North America. ...