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...

The D.C. Circuit held that environmental groups have standing to challenge DOI's decision to remove the Blair Mountain Battlefield—the site of a large 1921 coal miner uprising in West Virginia—from the National Register of Historic Places. Shortly after the Battlefield was listed in 2009, the si...

A Michigan appellate court upheld the state environmental agency's decision to grant a groundwater discharge permit to a company in connection with its plan to develop an underground mine to extract nickel and copper from the sulfide ores beneath the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River. The permit,...

A Michigan appellate court upheld the state environmental agency's decision to grant mining and discharge permits to a company to develop an underground mine to extract nickel and copper from the sulfide ores beneath the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River. Environmental groups opposed the permits,...

A Colorado court held that the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Act preempts a city's five-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. The city is a "home-rule" city, meaning it has “the full right of self-government” on local and municipal matters. Nevertheless, a local ordinance that infringes on...

The Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision that FHwA and North Carolina complied with NEPA in their approval of a bridge and highway improvement project between the mainland and the Outer Banks barrier islands, but reversed that court's determination that the defendants were exempt from co...