The Supreme Court remands to the New Jersey Supreme Court the question of whether the newly-enacted Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 preempts a New Jersey statute prohibiting the importation of solid waste into the state. The state court should address the statutory nature of this ques...

The Ninth Circuit affirms a lower federal court's abstention from hearing a suit brought by a landowner who claimed that defendant unconstitutionally prevented development of landowner's property. After initially rezoning the property for residential use, the city adopted an open-space plan that pro...

The court affirms the district court's denial, 5 ELR 20662, of plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and for a preliminary injunction restraining defendants from licensing the air transport of special nuclear materials before completion of an environmental impact statement as required by the Natio...

The court upholds the denial by the Director of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) of oil drilling permits in the Pigeon River State Forest notwithstanding the existence of valid oil leases. The Pigeon River Forest is a large, relatively unspoiled tract of mostly state land that contains the ...

Reversing the lower court decision, 4 ELR 20559, the Ninth Circuit holds that the mineral reservation in patents issued under the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 includes the right to produce geothermal steam. Owners and lessees of public lands, beneath which are sources of geothermal steam, sou...

The D.C. Circuit affirms the district court's dismissal, 407 F. Supp. 257 (D.D.C. 1976), for lack of standing to sue, of plaintiff's claim that the National Petroleum Council violates the balanced membership provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5 U.S.C. App. I, ELR 41019. The Cou...

The Army Corps of Engineers' power to require permits for construction in navigable waters under §§9 and 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 extends to Smith Mountain Lake, an artificial impoundment on the Roanoke River. The history of actual use of the river at Smith Mountain prior to the im...

The court finds an additional coal-fired generating unit at a municipal power plant to be a new stationary source subject to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations setting standards of performance for such sources under §306 of the Clean Air Act. The Act provides that the standards apply...

After a trial on the merits, the court enjoins further activities pursuant to leases sold by the Department of the Interior in August 1976 for exploration and production of oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Baltimore Canyon area off New Jersey and declares the leases null and v...

The Seventh Circuit vacates and remands a suit seeking to enjoin construction of a highway segment that had been dismissed because defendants had withdrawn the application for federal funding. The record reveals that the segment and the larger bypass project of which it is a part have an extensive h...