The Ninth Circuit granted in part and denied in part a petition challenging an NPDES permit authorizing oil and gas exploration facilities' discharge of 13 waste streams into the Beaufort Sea. The petition was filed by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, which represents Alaska Native villages tha...

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...

A district court dismissed environmental groups' CWA citizen suit against EPA for failing to respond in writing to their administrative petition seeking withdrawal of West Virginia's NPDES permit program, but held that the groups may go forward with their claim that the Agency's failure to timely re...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's (BSEE's) approval of oil spill response plans for an oil company's leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas on Alaska's Arctic coast. Several environmental groups claimed that BSEE's approval was arbitrary and capricious un...

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: "...