The court upheld the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's dismissal of environmental groups' intervention in early site permit proceedings for new nuclear power facilities in Clinton, Illinois. The groups contended, among other things, that the applicant failed to adequately consider energy efficiency or...
The court held that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) environmental assessment (EA) for a logging project in Oregon violated the National Environmental Policy Act and that the lower court erred in dismissing the case as moot. Although the harvested trees cannot be restored, harm to old gro...
The court held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction over a lower court's partial grant of summary judgment in favor of the parent company of a chemical plant in Bhopal, India, that allegedly caused soil and groundwater contamination. Property owners and residents near the plant sought monetary and ...
The court dismissed environmental organizations' claims that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) failed to conduct the environmental and historical assessments required by the National Environmental Polic...
A district court held that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) arbitrarily and capriciously denied petitions to list certain genetically engineered varieties of grasses as noxious weeds under the Plant Protection Act. APHIS' insistence that international obligations require that p...
The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' takings claim against a city for allowing their land to become flooded due to city-owned stormwater detention ponds and a wastewater treatment facility. The flooding transformed their land from farmland to wetlands. The landowners filed an inve...
The Ninth Circuit vacated a lower court decision granting in part and denying in part cross-motions for summary judgment in a case concerning the validity of the federal government's policy for listing killer whales under the Endangered Species Act. Since the lower court issued its decision, the Nat...
A district court held that the DOE's March 2003 decision regarding the remediation of Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, California, violated NPA. DOE's decision to issue a FONSI rather than prepare an EIS was a clear error of judgment. The remediation is not categorically ...
The D.C. Circuit set aside an FAA letter that changed the runway use procedures at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Petitioners argued that the new procedures will route more jet aircraft onto two previously restricted runways, thereby increasing noise, soot, and exhaust fumes over r...
A district court held that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Fisheries (NOAA-Fisheries) did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it chose not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) or environmental assessment for its Hatchery Listing Policy (HLP) fo...