A district court dismissed Pennsylvania's public nuisance, trespass, and Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practice and Consumer Protection Law claims against various refiners, manufacturers, marketers, distributors, and suppliers of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive. The case is part ...

A Colorado court upheld a city's decision to create a local electric utility. An electric company argued that the city council exceeded its authority when it created the utility. But the company missed the 28-day deadline for challenging quasi-judicial decisions. When the city declared that the cond...

A Washington court ordered the state's environmental agency to reconsider its denial of youths' petition asking the agency to adopt rulemaking to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in accordance with the best available science. The youths had also petitioned the agency to recommend to the state le...

The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Forest Service violated NEPA and other environmental safeguards when it designated over 2 million acres of public land within the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest for use by snowmobiles and other winter motorized vehicles. In 2009, the Forest Service issued a...

The D.C. Circuit reversed a lower court injunction requiring BLM to sell more timber from federal land managed under the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act of 1937. The lower court had sided with timber companies, granting their motions for summary judgment and is...

Georgia's highest court held that the state's 25-foot buffer zone for development projects along state waters does not apply to wetlands. The applicable statute does not require a buffer for state waters alongside banks without "wrested vegetation." The language at issue states, in pertinent part: "...

The Supreme Court of Alaska reversed a lower court decision that plaintiffs challenging land and water use permits allowing intensive mineral exploration in Alaska's prospective Pebble Mine had "sufficient economic incentive" to warrant the imposition of attorney fees against them. The plaintiffs ha...

The Supreme Court of Alaska held that the state's Department of Natural Resources should have provided public notice before issuing land and water use permits allowing intensive mineral exploration in the prospective Pebble Mine. The Alaska Constitution requires public notice when interests in land ...

A district court adopted a magistrate judge's report and recommendation and ordered FWS to finalize and approve a comprehensive conservation plan for five national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin Complex on or before August 1, 2016. FWS conceded, and the court had already ordered, that FWS vio...

A district court held that trade associations and nonprofit corporations representing members of the timber industry lack standing to challenge the Forest Service's 2012 planning rule governing development of individual land and resource management plans for the 155 national forests and 20 national ...