The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's record of decision determining the method for restoring a flood-damaged road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada. The Forest Service's interpretation of the applicable fish and wildlife restoration standards is reasonable. Accordingly,...

A Michigan appellate court held that Michigan's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act does not preempt a local ordinance requiring all septic tank waste collected from within a township to be taken to a specific treatment facility. Although the state legislature enacted a comprehensive ...

A California appellate court upheld a lower court decision preliminarily enjoining a county from enforcing a voter-approved ballot measure banning the use of agricultural fertilizer made from recycled municipal sewage sludge in unincorporated areas of the county. The application of this fertilizer, ...

The D.C. Circuit held that NRC's transfer of authority to New Jersey over nuclear materials within the state was arbitrary and capricious. The NRC may transfer regulatory authority over classes of nuclear materials located within a state to the government of that state. But here, the agency failed t...

The Louisiana Supreme Court held that a school district may seek remediation damages in excess of those required by state law from oil companies who engaged in oil exploration and production operations on school land. The district sought two types of damages: damages required under state law pursuan...

The Ninth Circuit held that BLM complied with NEPA and FLPMA when it allowed a uranium mine to resume operations, after a 17-year hiatus, under a plan of operations the agency approved in 1988. Environmental groups argued that the 1988 plan of operations became ineffective after the mine closed in t...

A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service violated its travel management rule, but not NEPA, when it issued its record of decision approving the Stanislaus National Forest Motorized Travel Management EIS. The agency looked at a reasonable range of alternatives to the proposed action, proper...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's adoption of the Idaho Roadless Rule, which creates different categories of land within Idaho's 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. The court affirmed and adopted as its own a lower court ruling that also approved the rule. FWS's biologi...

A district court ordered BLM to revise the Craters of the Moon and Pinedale resource management plans (RMPs) to correct deficiencies concerning impacts on the sage-grouse. In an earlier decision, the court held that BLM's EISs for the RMPs failed to adequately analyze impacts to the sage grouse in v...