A district court granted Missouri's remand request to litigate in state court its lawsuit against the owner and operator of a landfill in connection with an uncontrolled, underground trash fire at the site. The state alleged various state law violations, along with claims for nuisance, cost recovery...
A district court held it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over a class action lawsuit that stems from the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan. The plaintiffs alleged that the city violated their constitutional rights and state law by providing contaminated water and requiring them to pay ...
The Supreme Court of Montana upheld a lower court decision dismissing a smelting company's state-law claims against an oil refinery in connection with costs incurred remediating a former lead smelting site in East Helena, Montana. The refinery sold the site to the smelting company in 1972. Under the...
A district court held that FWS violated NEPA when it reissued two orders authorizing the killing of double-crested cormorants in certain states. FWS issued an EA and FONSI for the orders rather than an EIS. But the EA is insufficient to justify FWS' FONSI because FWS did not take the requisite “ha...
The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision dismissing fishermen's NEPA claims against the Bureau of Reclamation in connection with its approval of eight interim two-year contracts for delivery of water from the Central Valley Project to...
The Ninth Circuit held that the government complied with NEPA when it issued a FONSI in connection with the redevelopment of a 15-acre waterfront site owned by the U.S. Navy in downtown San Diego. The site serves as the home to several non-operational, administrative components of the U.S. Navy, and...
The Ninth Circuit denied a petition challenging the FAA's decision that no EIS was necessary to commence operating commercial passenger service at an industrial airport near Everett, Washington. The FAA prepared an EA, but chose not to prepare an EIS following its finding of no significant environme...
The Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to close to domestic sheep grazing approximately 70% of allotments on which grazing had been permitted in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The Forest Service's decision was made in response to concerns about disease transmission to imm...
The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow motorized vehicles on just 62 of 869 miles of user-created roads and trails in the Tahoe National Forest. To implement the 2005 Travel Management Rule in the Tahoe National Forest, the Forest Service pre...
West Virginia's highest court held that individuals' lawsuit against a power company for injuries they allegedly incurred due to their exposure to coal combustion waste may go forward in the West Virginia courts even though the vast majority of plaintiffs live outside the state. Of the 77 named plai...