The Eighth Circuit held that a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers jurisdictional determination (JD) is a final agency action under the APA, thereby creating a split between the circuits. The case arose after a company sought to mine peat from wetland property owned by two affiliated companies in northwest...

A district court upheld a U.S. Forest Service decision allowing a uranium mine to renew operations near the Grand Canyon National Park. In January 2012, DOI withdrew approximately 633,547 acres of public lands and 360,002 acres of National Forest System lands for up to 20 years from location and ent...

A district court held that EPA does not have a mandatory duty to review an amendment to the Pennsylvania Sewage Facilities Act under the CWA. The amendment allows the use of certain on-lot sewage systems to satisfy the state's antidegradation requirements. An environmental group claimed the amendmen...

A district court dismissed environmentalists' claim that EPA should have reviewed the entirety of Florida's impaired water rule (IWR), not just the portion that constitutes a new or revised water quality standard. States retain discretion to enact and to enforce—without EPA’s review and approval...

The Eleventh Circuit remanded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' conclusion that Nationwide Permit 21 (NWP 21), a general permit that allows surface coal mining operations to discharge dredged or fill materials into navigable waters, would have no more than minimal environmental effects under NEPA an...

A district court upheld the U.S. Forest Service's approval of the Big Thorne Project in the Tongass National Forest, thereby allowing the logging of approximately 6,186 acres of old growth forest and construction of 46.1 miles of new Forest Service roads to begin on April 1, 2015. Environmental grou...

A district court held that although EPA did not violate its nondiscretionary duty under the CWA to either approve or disapprove a TMDL for PCBs in the state of Washington, it acted contrary to law in determining that a "Regional Toxics Task Force" was a suitable alternative. Environmental groups fil...