Recent Updates to Federal Environmental and Natural Resource Regulations
On-Demand Webinar | Regulatory Uncertainty and Linear Infrastructure Projects: Where Are We and What’s Ahead?
On-Demand Webinar | Linear Infrastructure Redux: Adapting Your Projects to Meet the New Regulatory Climate
On-Demand Webinar | The New NEPA Regulations: A Practical Guide to What You Need to Know
How Trump's Infrastructure Plan Impacts the Energy Industry
On August 3, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that FERC could not avoid use of the social cost of carbon in assessing the impacts of natural gas projects by arguing that “there is no universally accepted...more
Two contrasting regulatory decisions by authorities in the United States and Mexico highlight the continued progress toward, and challenges to, the development of science and evidence based regulatory policies applicable to...more
The Ninth Circuit held that a 2012 Environmental Impact Statement that provided a programmatic-level analysis for management of lands in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve could also be used as the site-specific analysis...more
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it has identified the first two regions where Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOAs) will be located in federal waters off Southern California and in the...more
The Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA) late last week published two papers on recommendations for addressing regulatory challenges related to advanced reactor licensing...more
The United States Forest Service (“Service”) published a proposal in the June 13th Federal Register that contains a package of revisions to its National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) regulations. See 84 Fed. Reg. 27544. ...more
In 2016, DOI Secretarial Order 3338 imposed a moratorium on new coal leases on federal land until BLM prepared a programmatic environmental impact statement intended to address, among other issues, the impact of coal leasing...more
The White River Waterkeeper, of Arkansas, recently joined other environmental and animal rights advocacy organizations to file a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) 2016...more
The Utah coal industry has benefited from recent reforms in federal coal leasing, permitting and streamlining of environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”). During the previous administration,...more
The United States District Court (“D. Idaho”) addressed in a June 22nd Memorandum Decision and Order (“Order”) a National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) issue raised in connection with a U.S. Department of Agriculture...more
Five individuals filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas on July 18th addressing what they describe as construction involving the widening of Interstate Highway 630 (“I-630...more
On June 19, 2018, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a challenge by environmental groups and held that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has no legal obligation to update its...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Court”) addressed in a June 8th opinion whether a community protection line (“CPL”) constructed during a wildfire is exempted from the requirement to prepare a...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Court”) in a March 27th opinion addressed whether an action involving the Whistling Ridge Energy Project (“Project”) was “federal” for the purposes of the National...more
On August 15, 2017, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) (not yet numbered) that seeks to streamline federal environmental review and approvals of major infrastructure projects by imposing new timelines and...more
Earlier this week, the Judge Donald Malloy of the District Court for the District of Montana granted summary judgment to the Montana Environmental Information Center on several of its claims alleging that the Office of...more
On January 11, 2017, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within the Department of the Interior released a scoping report analyzing a wide range of proposed reforms to the federal coal leasing program, administered by the BLM....more