The court upholds a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rule that was promulgated pursuant to the Overflights Act and designed to reduce aircraft noise from sight-seeing tours in the Grand Canyon National Park. The Act required the Secretary of the Interior, via the National Park Service (NPS), to...
The court holds that the U.S. Forest Service complied with the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it issued a permit to a Colorado ski resort for the expansion of a ski area within the White River National Forest. The court first holds that ne...
The U.S. Supreme Court holds that a Native American tribe's and U.S. claims to additional water rights from the Colorado River are not precluded by a previous Court decision or by a 1983 consent decree entered into by the United States and the tribe. The tribe's and the government's present claims a...
The court holds that a trial court erred in resolving water right priorities in an overdrafted basin with a "physical solution" that relies on the equitable apportionment doctrine but does not consider the affected owners' legal rights in the basin. Landowners who had overlying water rights in the M...
The court holds that although the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it failed to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) necessary for certain timber sales in the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho, the Forest Service's subsequent pre...
Editors' Summary: Although most talk in terms of wildlife protection seems to focus on the operation of the ESA, there are a host of other federal and state laws designed to protect wildlife from the impacts of resource-development projects—before the species become threatened or endangered.
Editors' Summary: In 1989, a National Research Council study concluded that contaminated sediments are "widespread in U.S. coastal waters" and have "potentially far-reaching consequences to both public health and the environment." A 1996 interim EPA report reached a similar conclusion. This concern over contaminated sediments is not new. It has manifested itself in a dizzying array of statutory and regulatory restrictions on the disposal of these sediments.
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision invalidating the U.S. Forest Service's 2007 travel management plan for parts of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Nothing in the Montana Wilderness Study Act of 1977, which requires the Service to manage a wilderness study area so as to "maintain"...