On-Demand Webinar | Charting a Course for Offshore Wind Energy in California
[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
This morning our nation's highest court agreed to hear an appeal by seven Utah Counties and a railroad company of a DC Circuit Court of Appeals decision. That DC Circuit decision revoked the Surface Transportation Board's...more
This is the fifth in a series of six eAlerts on the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule published in the Federal Register on May 1, 2024 (Final Rule) by the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ). The Final Rule...more
On May 8th, 2024, the Little Hoover Commission released its much-anticipated report, “CEQA: Targeted Reform for California’s Core Environmental Law” putting forth recommendations to improve the functioning of the California...more
This is the third in a series of six eAlerts on the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule published in the Federal Register on May 1, 2024 (Final Rule) by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The Final Rule...more
In the Fall of 2023, the Interagency Working Group on Mining Laws, Regulations, and Permitting (“IWG”) released its final report containing recommendations to reform how mining is conducted on public lands (the “Final...more
Welcome to “CEQA News You Can Use,” a quarterly production of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP’s Natural Resources lawyers. This publication provides quick, useful bites of CEQA news, which we hope can be a resource to...more
Several recent proposals impacting implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA") demonstrate a renewed focus on considering climate change in federal decision-making. In July, the Council on Environmental...more
This week, the Ninth Circuit considers personal jurisdiction in a trademark declaratory judgment action and assesses an agency’s decision to omit an environmental-impact statement in connection with a forest-fire-management...more
On July 31, 2023, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) proposed the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule (“Proposed Rule”), 88 Fed. Reg. 49,924 (July 31, 2023), which is better known as Phase 2 of the...more
On June 3, 2023, President Biden signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA). The FRA was the result of an agreement between White House and congressional GOP negotiators....more
The reform mainly focuses on streamlining and narrowing the scope of environmental review at the federal level. On June 3, 2023, President Biden signed legislation implementing the bipartisan debt ceiling and budget...more
On Wednesday, May 17, 2023, the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted summary judgment in favor of the United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) and Vineyard Wind, and denied summary...more
The United States House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources (“Committee”) is holding a hearing today addressing the following legislation: Building United States Infrastructure through Limited Delays and...more
Last week, Judge Donald Malloy vacated the Environmental Assessment for the Bull Mountains Mine No. 1 in central Montana. Judge Malloy had already vacated the EA once; when the 9th Circuit affirmed Judge Malloy’s decision...more
On December 19, 2022, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps), Sacramento District released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Delta Conveyance Project. The Army Corps is the federal agency tasked...more
Last month, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf wrote to the Federal Highway Administration, stating that Oakland “is suffering from a crippling housing and homelessness crisis.”...more
Last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals again rejected a FERC NEPA review for failure to assess the climate impacts resulting from the downstream use of natural gas supplied by a gas pipeline upgrade project...more
On February 18, 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) issued two controversial policy statements that will significantly impact the permitting and construction of new natural gas pipeline...more
Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) in 1970. The legislation is deceptively simple, taking up less than six pages upon enactment. It requires a federal agency...more
Environmental justice is clearly an idea whose time has – finally – come. The need to find the intersection between the search for racial justice and efforts to save the planet is undeniable. If we get it right, we’ll be at...more
Editor’s Note: On April 21, 2021, HaystackID shared an educational webcast designed to inform and update legal and data discovery professionals on how organizations can manage public comment responses for environmental impact...more
Following the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) July 2020 overhaul of regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), environmental plaintiffs filed a series of lawsuits challenging the rule in...more
Earlier this Month, Judge James Boasberg, who had previously ruled that the easement allowing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline must be vacated due to a failure to comply with NEPA, nonetheless declined to issue an...more
Last week the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and request for comment on categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires that...more
The Ninth Circuit vacated U.S. Department of the Interior approvals for a proposed offshore oil drilling and production facility in Alaska after finding its EIS improperly failed to consider impacts associated with foreign...more