Living Rivers v. U.S. Oil Sands, Inc.
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...
Lubbock, Texas v. Coyote Lake Ranch, LLC
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 ...
Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance v. Jewell
A district court upheld National Park Service (NPS) regulations restricting off-road vehicle (ORV) use in North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore at certain times of the year. Petitioners argued the rule was arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance w...
Illinois Commerce Commission v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
The Seventh Circuit, for the second time, vacated a FERC order that allocates costs for certain new high-voltage network transmission lines in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The order allocates the costs of the lines across all the utilities in proportion to each utility’s respective sales. But the...