The Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the Ohio Secretary of State's invalidation of three county ballot measures that, if approved by voters, would have banned high-volume hydraulic fracturing as a method of oil and gas extraction in those jurisdictions. Despite the secretary's conclusion to the contrary...

A district court held that its preliminary injunction enjoining EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from implementing the "waters of the United States" rule only extends to the 13 plaintiff states that challenged it. The court found significant prudential reasons to limit the scope of the preli...

A district court dismissed EPA's enforcement action against a developer for filling wetlands in violation of the CWA and ordered the Agency to pay attorney fees the developer incurred defending the suit. Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715, 36 ELR 20...

A district court largely dismissed claims challenging California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a collection of regulations promulgated by the California Air Resources Board to implement provisions of California Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. In September 2013, the Ninth Ci...

The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation did not violate the CWA by discharging pollutants into the Klamath River without a permit in connection with its management of an irrigation project along the California-Oregon border. The Klamath Straits Drain, part of the Klamath Irrigatio...

A district court held that it lacked jurisdiction over a coal company's lawsuit challenging EPA's and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' controversial "waters of the United States" rule. The agencies filed a motion to stay the case based, in part, on their position that exclusive jurisdiction to hear...

A district court preliminarily enjoined EPA's and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' controversial "waters of the United States" rule. Thirteen states—Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming—challenged the...

A California court held that revised "curtailment letters" that the state water board sent to irrigation districts and water appropriators in the Central Valley no longer violate due process, and therefore denied the districts' motions for a preliminary injunction. The court previously ruled that th...

A district court held that a mining company violated state and federal permits when it discharged high levels of ionic pollution. Environmental groups successfully demonstrated that high conductivity discharges from two of the company's mines are causing or materially contributing to the biological ...

The Seventh Circuit upheld EPA's approval of revisions to Illinois' SIP, thereby rejecting challenges raised by Indiana. Indiana argued that the relaxation of Illinois' vehicle emissions testing program will decrease the likelihood that the Chicago area—which includes two Indiana counties—will a...