The Ninth Circuit rejected challleges to a 2012 DOI decision to withdraw from new uranium mining claims, up to twenty years, over one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park. The lands were withdrawn, subject to existing valid claims, with the intent to protect water resources in the G...

The California Supreme Court held that the charges a California city must pay to a local water district for groundwater conservation activities do not require voter or property owner approval. By statute, charges for pumping groundwater for nonagricultural uses generally must be at least three times...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court's dismissal of a tribe's NEPA challenge to a DOI guidance that did not consider its interest when allocating the water rights of the Colorado River. The tribe contended that it was unlawfully excluded from DOI 2001 and 2008 guidances that outlined how water is ...

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...