A California court dismissed environmental groups' lawsuit against the California Department of Conservation, Division Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) for failing to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act in issuing permits for oil and gas wells that involve hydraulic fractur...

A district court held that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated NEPA and the ESA in approving certain operations at a fish hatchery on Oregon's Sandy River. NMFS regulations provide an exemption for the otherwise unlawful take of anadromous fish caused by a hatchery's artificial pro...

The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM's) EIS analyzing the environmental effects of proposed oil and gas development leases in the Chukchi Sea of the northwest coast of Alaska violated NEPA. Although the EIS properly took account of incomplete or unavailable infor...

A district court granted EPA's motion to amend a consent decree requiring it to adopt numeric criteria for Florida's waters unless the state does so first. Florida adopted new nutrient criteria, but for some waters, the criteria are not numeric. EPA then sought to modify the consent decree so that t...

The Fifth Circuit upheld the conviction and sentencing of the former owner of a wastewater treatment facility who allowed the disposal of untreated wastewater into U.S. waters without a permit. The former owner argued that the lower court erred in excluding evidence about the lack of environmental h...