The Ninth Circuit upheld EPA's approval of Nevada's SIP for regional haze. In the SIP, Nevada provided reasonable progress goals for attaining natural visibility conditions at the Jarbridge Wilderness Area in remote northeastern Nevada, the state’s only Class I federal area. The SIP further requir...
The D.C. Circuit upheld a $72 million judgment against an automobile manufacturer for violating a consent decree requiring certain model year 2005 engines to comply with EPA’s model-year 2006 nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions standard. In 1998, EPA alleged that several major engine manufacturers viol...
The Fifth Circuit held that notices of violations EPA sent to two power plant operators for alleged CAA violations were not "final agency action" and, hence, not subject to judicial review. In the notices, EPA claimed that the operators violated the Act's PSD provisions in connection with certain ph...
The Supreme Court of Utah dismissed an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the state's issuance of a discharge permit for a tar sands bitumen-extraction project in the Uintah Basin. The original discharge permit was granted by the Utah Division of Water Quality (DWQ) in 2008. In 2011, the Utah...
A Texas appellate court reversed a lower court decision enjoining a city from undertaking certain activities relating to further development of its proposed water well plan on a landowner's property. The city owns the groundwater rights under the landowner's property, and in 2012 it proposed a well ...
The D.C. Circuit held that environmental groups lacked standing to challenge an EPA memo issued to regional directors in response to an earlier court decision vacating the Agency's 2011 Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (the "transport rule"), which sets sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions lim...
The Supreme Court of Alaska upheld a ballot initiative that would require legislative approval of the any new large-scale metallic sulfide mining operation—the Pebble Mine gold and copper project—in the Bristol Bay watershed. Despite mining associations' arguments to the contrary, the "Bristol B...