The court holds that an electric utility violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) when it completed 11 construction activities that modified a coal-fired electric-generating facility without first calculating post-construction emissions and obtaining preconstruction CAA prevention of significant deteriorati...

The court dismisses a railroad's state-law and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) claims against two petroleum companies that operated pipeline terminals on the railroad's property. Claim preclusion barred the railroad from bringing suit against one of the...

The court reverses a district court decision that environmental groups failed to establish both standing and ripeness in their National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) challenges to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rule defining the new national forest managem...

The Ninth Circuit holds that a district court erred in holding that residents living across from a county dump lacked standing to bring Clean Air Act (CAA) claims based on ozone degradation against a county health department and in granting the county summary judgment on the residents' Resource Cons...

The court holds that it lacked jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) decision denying environmental groups' request that the licensing of two nuclear power plants in New York be conditioned on several safety-related changes in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist att...

The court holds that a local transportation control measure, adopted as part of California's state implementation plan to attain federal air quality standards in the San Francisco Bay Area, does not impose an enforceable obligation on the local transportation commission to increase public transit ri...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that certain aspects of local fleet rules do not escape preemption under CAA §209(a) simply because they address the purchase of vehicles rather than their manufacture or sale. The fleet rules prohibit the purchase or lease of vehicles by fleet operators that do not ...

The Sixth Circuit upheld EPA's redesignation of Cleveland, Ohio, from nonattainment to attainment for particulate matter under CAA §107(d)(3)(E). An environmental group argued that EPA illegally waived statutory requirements when it redesignated the area to attainment by not fully approving the...

The Eighth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a landowner's lawsuit challenging the USDA's financing of a sewage treatment plant for lack of standing. The landowner argued that in the event of a 100-year flood, the treatment plant increases the risk of flooding on his land. The landowner, however, fail...

The First Circuit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction Rhode Island's interlocutory appeal of an EPA Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) decision denying the state's motion to intervene in an NPDES permit proceeding. As a matter of first impression in the circuit, the court held that the collateral orde...