The Supreme Court holds that the Carey Act of 1894 neither reserves a specific acreage of public domain desert land for any state nor automatically obligates the Secretary of the Interior to grant specific lands chosen by a state. In order to aid states in the reclamation of desert land, the Carey A...

Reversing the district court, 9 ELR 20032, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determines that the construction of a diked disposal area for dredge spoils does not require congressional authorization pursuant to §9 of the Rivers and Harbors Act but may instead be authorized by the Corps of Engineer...

The court holds that the 1964 amendments to the Wildlife Refuge Revenue Sharing Act, 16 U.S.C. §715s, which governs the distribution of revenue from federal leases on public lands within the National Wildlife Refuge System, apply only to acquired, not to reserved, refuge lands. The Mineral Leasing ...

Affirming the decision of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, 9 ELR 20530, the Supreme Court upholds the validity of oil shale claims located prior to the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. Under the general mining law of 1872, citizens could obtain title to land on which "valuable mineral ...

The First Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a contempt citation and civil fines against the mayor for failing to comply with a cleanup order for a municipal dump. As a result of poor planning in siting the dump, heavy rains caused water and air pollution and property damage. Nearby residents brought ...

Affirming in part and reversing in part the lower court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on challenges to the Department of the Interior's regulatory program under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Following publication of the final interim regulations in December 1977, a numbe...

Affirming the result reached by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court invalidates a workplace regulation issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reducing the permissible airborne concentration of benzene from 10 parts per million (ppm) to one ppm and prohib...

The court dismisses plaintiffs' challenge to the adequacy of the Forest Service's environmental assessment report (EAR) for the Ryan Timber Sales Area in the Colville National Forest. Emphasizing that the suit was groundless, the judge awards costs to defendants. The court rejects plaintiffs' first ...

The court holds that the Secretary of the Interior, in promulgating minimum requirements for state regulatory programs under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, may not demand that more information be obtained from applicants for coal-mining permits than that specified in §§507 and 508...

Reversing the district court, 10 ELR 20293, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rules that appellees inadequately considered alternative routes for a proposed highway segment in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Although the alternative alignment urged by appellants was examined in ...