A district court held that a mining company allowed excessive amounts of selenium to be discharged from one of its surface coal mine operations in violation of the CWA and SMCRA. The company's state permit does not explicitly impose selenium limitations, but it does incorporate by reference state re...

The Supreme Court of Utah dismissed an environmental group's lawsuit challenging the state's issuance of a discharge permit for a tar sands bitumen-extraction project in the Uintah Basin. The original discharge permit was granted by the Utah Division of Water Quality (DWQ) in 2008. In 2011, the Utah...

A Texas appellate court reversed a lower court decision enjoining a city from undertaking certain activities relating to further development of its proposed water well plan on a landowner's property. The city owns the groundwater rights under the landowner's property, and in 2012 it proposed a well ...

The Supreme Court of Alaska upheld a ballot initiative that would require legislative approval of the any new large-scale metallic sulfide mining operation—the Pebble Mine gold and copper project—in the Bristol Bay watershed. Despite mining associations' arguments to the contrary, the "Bristol B...

The D.C. Circuit dismissed as untimely a coal mine operator’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a DOI regulation requiring coal mine operators to pay a fee for each ton of coal they produce by mining. The regulation requires mine operators to pay the reclamation fee when the coal is ult...

An Alaska court held that state law impliedly preempts a ballot initiative that would allow a local borough to prohibit the issuance of a permit for large-scale mines that would have a significant adverse impact on salmon-bearing waters. The court rejected the state's claim that the initiative, loca...

The Ninth Circuit held that BLM did not violate NEPA or FLPMA when it approved the expansion of a gold mine near Nevada's Mount Tenabo. Native American tribes claimed that BLM failed to address mitigation measures specific to groundwater in situ, failed to propose new mitigation measures relating to...

A district court vacated a 2008 rule issued by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) that governs the operation of coal mining activities near and through streams. The 2008 rule revised a 1983 rule, retaining the previous rule's stream buffer zone requirement, but establishi...

The Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a landowner's suit against a chemical company for damages stemming from natural gas well operations. The company operated the well in the late 1960s and early 1970s under a mineral lease that expired in 1975. The lease granted the landowners the right to sue...

The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of environmental groups' lawsuit challenging BLM's decision to lease two tracts of land in the Wyoming Powder River Basin for coal mining. The groups argued that BLM failed to adequately consider several environmental concerns, including the increase in local ...