The court holds that the Director of the California Department of Conservation has standing to file a petition for a writ of mandate challenging a county's approval of reclamation plans and financial assurances for two surface mining operations. The Director's standing to pursue a writ of mandate is...

The court holds that the state of Utah lacks authority to regulate billboard advertising displays erected by a Native American tribe on land held in trust by the federal government. Section 465 of the Indian Reorganization Act—the statute authorizing acquisition of the land—does not violate the ...

The court vacates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's equipment replacement provision (ERP) rule, which expanded the routine maintenance, repair, and replacement exclusion from new source review (NSR) requirements by allowing sources to avoid NSR when replacing equipment that does not exceed ...

The court removes the New York Superfund disposal tax—Environmental Conservation Law §27-0923(2)—from its statutory financing scheme for the cleanup of inactive hazardous waste disposal sites. The courts below have already held, and the state does not contest, that the disposal tax unlawfully d...

The court grants a local water authority's motion to intervene in a case brought by environmental groups challenging the validity of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's biological opinion concerning the coordinated operation of the federally managed Central Valley Project (CVP) and California's Sta...

The court affirms the dismissal of individuals' state-law counterclaims against a gasoline company that was suing them under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for contamination at a service station. A ...

The court vacates and remands a lower court decision upholding a state university's approval of an environmental impact report prepared in connection with plans to expand its campus on a former army base. Although the university agrees to mitigate effects occurring on the campus itself, it disclaims...

The court upheld an interlocutory order joining a city as a third-party defendant in an environmental group's 14-year-old Clean Water Act (CWA) action against a county, but certified to the New York Court of Appeals questions concerning the county's condemnation power. Parties to the underlying CWA ...

A court upheld a lower court decision ordering the state wildlife conservation board to set aside its approval of a project involving the conversion of agricultural land into wildlife habitat as categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Despite the intended beneficia...

The court held that a local ordinance that forbids any new oil and gas drilling within 1,000 feet of a lake is "preempted" by state law rather than "invalid." As explained by a prior panel of the court, a state statute expressly prohibits local political subdivisions from interfering with the drilli...