A district court dismissed a lawsuit challenging EPA's initiation of CWA §404(c) proceedings for the proposed Pebble Mine project, a large copper and gold mine in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska. Alaska, which owns the land, as well as the company that owns the underlying mineral ri...

A district court upheld EPA's revocation of a CWA §404 permit allowing a mining company to discharge fill material from its West Virginia mountaintop coal mine into two nearby streams. EPA withdrew the permit's designation of the streams as disposal sites after determining that the discharges would...

A district court upheld DOI's decision to withdraw more than one million acres of federal land adjacent to the Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining. The withdrawal will close these lands to the exploration and development of uranium mining claims for 20 years, although mining of a few exis...

The Ohio Supreme Court held that a mineral rights owner may be able to strip mine portions of a state wildlife area. The state and the mineral rights owner entered a contract granting the owner “all mineral rights, including rights of ingress and egress and reasonable surface right privileges.” ...

A district court issued a final order vacating BLM's and the U.S. Forest Service's approval of on-the-ground mining exploration activities in a part of western Colorado's North Fork Valley. The court previously held that the agencies violated NEPA when it approved the projects and enjoined interveni...

The Ninth Circuit held that the owner and operator of a coal export terminal may be held liable under the CWA for non-stormwater discharges of coal into Resurrection Bay, Alaska. Because the facility has been covered under the Multi-Sector General Permit for Stormwater Discharges Associated with Ind...

The Ninth Circuit held that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over environmental groups' citizen suit challenging the Montana Department of Environmental Quality's potential approval of a surface mining permit. The groups argued that the agency director would be in violation of SMCRA if she appro...

A district court denied an environmental group's motion to preliminarily enjoin BLM from issuing oil and gas leases in central and southwest Nevada due to allegedly defective environmental analyses. Although BLM has conducted a lease sale, it retains discretion to issue any leases resulting from tha...