A California appellate court held that a project to modify an oil refinery so it can unload the equivalent of 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day should not proceed until corrections can be made to its state environmental impact report (EIR). The project proposed transporting crude oil from the Bak...

A district court held that a lawsuit challenging the Keystone XL pipeline can continue despite calls from the federal government to dismiss the case. On April 4, 2017, the State Department approved a presidential permit for the pipeline. In its approval, the State Department relied on a 2014 EIS con...

A district court held that the Forest Service did not violate NEPA when it reduced grazing permits on federal land in New Mexico. The Jarita Mesa Allotment and the Alamosa Allotment are both within the El Rito Ranger District of Carson National Forest. The Forest Service issues ten-year permits that...

A district court held that a group of North Dakota property owners could not sue contractors hired to negotiate easements for the Dakota Access pipeline for misrepresentation and fraud. The contractors were hired to obtain easements from property owners to secure a path for the Dakota Access pipelin...

The Ninth Circuit held that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act did not limit the Park Service from applying the hovercraft ban on the Nation River in the Yukon-Charley preserve. A plaintiff sought to use his hovercraft in a national preserve to reach moose hunting grounds. While sta...

The Tenth Circuit held that BLM's approval of coal leases in the Wyoming Powder River Basin violated NEPA. In its 2010 EIS for the leases, BLM concluded that there was no appreciable difference between the United States’ total carbon dioxide emissions under its preferred alternative and the no-act...

The Tenth Circuit held that a Wyoming law that imposed civil and criminal liability on those who cross private property to access adjacent land to collect resource data violates the First Amendment. In 2015, Wyoming enacted a pair of statutes that prohibited individuals from entering “open land fo...

The Ninth Circuit held that the FAA did not act arbitrarily when it forewent a full EIS on a third runway at the Hillsboro Airport in Hillsboro, Oregon. In 2005, the airport, the busiest in the state of Oregon, developed a plan to deal with traffic that included the addition of a third runway. Since...

The Sixth Circuit held that the Forest Service's rules regarding recreational boating on Crooked Lake in Michigan's Sylvania Wilderness exceeded the agency's power as applied to private property owners. Congress gave the Forest Service authority to regulate any use of Crooked Lake and nearby lakes �...

The California Supreme Court held that the state Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was not preempted by federal law. The North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) undertook a project to update and repair railroad tracks that run across the Eel and Russian Rivers and restore freight operation in the areas...