The First Circuit, in a case of first impression, vacated a lower court decision that it should abstain from hearing a RCRA citizen suit concerning the cleanup of contamination caused by leaking USTs at a former gasoline filling station in Puerto Rico. The pendency of parallel state administ...

The D.C. Circuit upheld the dismissal of a Native American tribe's case against DOE asking it to clean up two contaminated sites under the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation and Control Act (UMTRCA). The sites, located on Navajo tribal land, were contaminated by Word War II and Cold War era u...

The Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded DOE's energy transmission congestion study and national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridor designations prepared under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The EPAct added §216 to the Federal Power Act, requiring DOE to prepare the conges...

A California court issued a tentative ruling that would require the California Air Resources Board to set aside its "functional equivalent document" that evaluates the environmental consequences of its climate change scoping plan and to enjoin implementation of the scoping plan until the age...

A district court held DOI in contempt of court for imposing a second moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the court preliminarily enjoined the agency from enforcing the agency's original moratorium. Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, DOI issued a six-mo...