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 vacates the dismissal of dairy farmers' claims that their cows and farmland were poisoned by defendant's factory emissions over several decades. Because there is a material issue of fact as to whether the farmers exercised reasonable diligence in determining the cause of their cows' sympto...

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 denies a railway company's petition for review of a Surface Transportation Board order rejecting as unreasonable certain rates the railroad charged to a company to ship coal. The board issued its ruling three-and-one-half years after a complaint was filed. Because 49 U.S.C. §11701(c) prov...

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 vacates an individual's sentence for illegally dredging North Carolina's Croatan Sound during a bridge construction project and remands the case for resentencing. The district court misapplied U.S. Sentencing Guideline §5K2.20 when it granted the individual a downward departure for aberra...

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...

The court held that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation did not breach its repayment contract with a municipal water district concerning a water reclamation project on the Ventura River in California when it required the district to build a $9.1 million fish passage facility and to relinquish a portion o...