The district court rules that the defendant Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in two respects in issuing a permit to construct a shopping mall in a wetland area but declines to enjoin continued work on the project. The court first rejects the argument that beca...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidates as arbitrary and capricious an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) order requiring the installation of a sampling station in the tall stack of a copper smelter in Hayden, Arizona. The court of appeals first rules that the district court improperly con...

The district court dismisses, for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted, a suit seeking principally to remedy the alleged failure of the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent emissions of air pollutants in New Jersey and New York from interfering wit...

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the district court's dismissal, 10 ELR 20438, of a suit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) allegedly inadequate control of air pollution moving from New York and New Jersey into Connecticut. Rejecting appellants' claim that the EPA A...

The Supreme Court holds that the Carey Act of 1894 neither reserves a specific acreage of public domain desert land for any state nor automatically obligates the Secretary of the Interior to grant specific lands chosen by a state. In order to aid states in the reclamation of desert land, the Carey A...

Reversing the district court, 9 ELR 20032, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determines that the construction of a diked disposal area for dredge spoils does not require congressional authorization pursuant to §9 of the Rivers and Harbors Act but may instead be authorized by the Corps of Engineer...

The court holds that the 1964 amendments to the Wildlife Refuge Revenue Sharing Act, 16 U.S.C. §715s, which governs the distribution of revenue from federal leases on public lands within the National Wildlife Refuge System, apply only to acquired, not to reserved, refuge lands. The Mineral Leasing ...

Affirming the decision of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, 9 ELR 20530, the Supreme Court upholds the validity of oil shale claims located prior to the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. Under the general mining law of 1872, citizens could obtain title to land on which "valuable mineral ...

The First Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a contempt citation and civil fines against the mayor for failing to comply with a cleanup order for a municipal dump. As a result of poor planning in siting the dump, heavy rains caused water and air pollution and property damage. Nearby residents brought ...

Affirming in part and reversing in part the lower court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on challenges to the Department of the Interior's regulatory program under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Following publication of the final interim regulations in December 1977, a numbe...