Articles

Just an hour ago, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 that the Bureau of Reclamation did not violate the Endangered Species Act when it renewed 41 water contracts as part of the Central Valley Project.  (PLF filed an amicus brief supporting the water contractors).  Judge Hug, writing for … ...

On Monday morning in Las Vegas, the Ninth Circuit will hear the consolidated appeals of the federal government and its environmentalist supporters challenging Judge Oliver Wanger’s decision to overturn the Delta smelt biological opinion.  These appeals promise to be precedent-setting, as Judge Wanger’s decision was one of the first to ...

Yesterday, Judge Lawrence O’Neill, Judge Wanger’s replacement in the Delta smelt cases, denied the joint motion of the feds and the California Department of Water Resources to extend by several years the existing deadline for these agencies to produce a new Delta smelt biological opinion to govern the Central Valley and State Water Proj ...

This morning, Judge Lawrence O’Neill of the Eastern District of California (who now presides over the Consolidated Delta Smelt and Consolidated Salmonid Cases following Judge Oliver Wanger’s retirement last year) partially granted the federal government’s request for more time to complete new biological opinions governing the op ...