The court holds that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which entered into two agreements with Canada regarding rights to excess water stored in reservoirs on the Columbia River system in Canada, did not violate the Northwest Power Act (NPA) or the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). T...

The court upholds the U.S. government's imposition, under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, of a special assessment on domestic utilities to help fund the cleanup of governmental facilities that provided uranium enrichment services to the assessed utilities. The court first holds that the provisions of...

The court holds that a uranium mining company must exhaust its jurisdiction-based appeals in the Navajo tribal court system before challenging in federal court the Navajo court's jurisdiction over nuclear torts. The court first holds that the Price-Anderson Act's jurisdictional provisions do not cre...

The court holds that a district court erred in including as "relevant conduct" for sentencing purposes an individual's sale of 118 black bear gall bladders to an undercover agent. The court first holds that the district court erred because relevant conduct under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines must b...

The court sets aside the critical habitat designation (CHD) for the southwestern willow flycatcher because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS') adoption of a baseline approach to measure the economic impact of the flycatcher CHD was an erroneous construction of the Endangered Species Act (ESA...

The court denies environmental groups' petitions to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) decision not to bring an enforcement action against a city for violating the terms of an operating license for a hydroelectric project on the Cowlitz River in Washington. In 1967, the city ...

The court holds that an electric utility company that was a 70% owner of a nuclear power plant in Iowa can deduct 15 years' worth of Energy Policy Act (EPACT) assessments in the tax year that the liability was determined. In 1992, Congress enacted the EPACT, which established a fund for the decontam...

The Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court order enjoining the future planting of disputed genetically engineered alfalfa seed pending the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's completion of an enivironmental impact statement. The district court applied the traditional balancing test, and no...

The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order allowing states to regulate the reimbursement of "headwater benefits" from downstream hydropower plants to upstream dam operators. To enable upstream firms to recoup part of the cost of conferring headwater be...

The Fourth Circuit held that the Federal Power Act (FPA) does not grant the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permitting jurisdiction when a state denies approval of a permit application within one year. Two state utilities commissions and two community interest organizations challenged se...