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Our Cases
| Banning Dangerous Rat Poisons | The American Bird Conservancy, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, are taking legal action to support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to ban sales of several harmful rodenticides. |
| Challenging Fees For Industrial Polluters in Southern California |
Earthjustice is representing the Natural Resources Defense Council and Communities for a Better Environment in challenging a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that would relieve major industrial sources in the smog-choked L.A. region from Clean Air Act obligations to pay a fee for their emissions that contribute to ozone pollution in the region. |
| Cleaning Up Fine Particle Pollution |
Following a lawsuit brought by Earthjustice on behalf of American Lung Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Medical Advocates for Healthy Air, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement stronger requirements to clean up particulate matter, also known as “soot,“ one of the deadliest forms of air pollution. |
| Protecting Lake Tahoe from a Massive Ski Resort Expansion |
In a move to protect the environmental quality of a lake known for its natural beauty, community members and conservationists asked a federal court to reject an inadequate Environmental Impact Report and to stop the construction of a 325-unit complex along California’s scenic west shore of Lake Tahoe. Earthjustice is representing the Sierra Club, as well as Friends of the West Shore, a grassroots community organization representing more than 500 members from the California side of Lake Tahoe. |
| Reid Gardner Haze Rule | The Moapa Band of Paiutes and environmental allies filed suit in federal court over the issue of air pollutants from the Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant located just a couple hundred yards from the homes of Moapa Paiute families. The lawsuit is being filed in the 9th Circuit Court by Earthjustice on behalf of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, Sierra Club, and National Parks Conservation Association. |
| Challenging Unregulated Fracking in California | As hundreds of California oil and gas wells undergo dangerous hydraulic fracturing without government oversight, environmental advocates, represented by Earthjustice, are in court to force the agency responsible for regulating the oil and gas industry to abide by the state’s foremost law that protects public health and the environment. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, charges that the California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources has failed to consider or evaluate the risks of fracking, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act. |
| Sale of Four Corners Coal-Fired Power Plant Challenged | Earthjustice intervened in two California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) proceedings on behalf of the Sierra Club, challenging actions taken by Southern California Edison (SCE) to extend the operating life of two highly polluting coal burning electrical generators in New Mexico. |
| Stanislaus National Forest Travel Management Plan Challenged |
Earthjustice is representing conservation groups in challenging the Forest Service's adoption of a motorized travel management plan that failed to minimize damage from off-road vehicles (ORV) in the Stanislaus National Forest, a popular recreational destination in California that encompasses approximately 900,000 acres on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. |
| Damaging Russian River Gravel Mining Plan Challenged |
Earthjustice is representing Russian Riverkeeper and the Redwood Empire Chapter of Trout Unlimited in challenging the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors’ December 7, 2010 approval of a massive gravel mining operation called the Syar Alexander Valley Instream Mining Project. The mining will take place on a 6.5-mile stretch of river located in the lower Alexander Valley near the town of Geyserville and is the first mining project of significance in the lower Alexander Valley in more than 10 years. |
| California's Approval of Methyl Iodide Challenged |
Earthjustice is representing a coalition of groups and farm workers in challenging the California Department of Pesticide Regulation's approval of the cancer-causing strawberry pesticide methyl iodide. Wrongly touted by the manufacturer as environmentally superior to fumigants that contain methyl bromide, methyl iodide is in fact an extremely poisonous and dangerous pesticide that causes cancer and pollutes groundwater. |
| Texas Coal Plant Sued Over Air Pollution Violations | Earthjustice is representing the Sierra Club in its lawsuit against Texas coal plant owner, Luminant Generation Company, for repeatedly violating federal air pollution regulations. The company’s Martin Lake plant, one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation, has accumulated more than 50,000 air pollution violations in the last five years. |
| Air Quality in the San Joaquin Valley |
Air quality planning in the San Joaquin Valley is broken. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA sets national standards and the state and local air districts are responsible for developing the plans for how areas that fail to meet those national standards will control pollution sources in order to come into compliance. For the last 10 years Earthjustice has been putting the pressure on EPA and the local air district to adopt meaningful plans and enforce the deadlines for agency action under the Clean Air Act. |
| Pacific Fisher: Warranted, But Precluded |
A close relative of the mink, otter, and wolverine, the Pacific fisher (Martes pennanti) once roamed the old-growth forests of the West Coast from Washington state to the Sierra Nevada. As with many other predatory species, however, fisher populations have declined dramatically in recent decades due to trapping, logging, farming, and fire. Survey information indicates that the fisher is likely extirpated from all of Washington, most of Oregon, and at least half of its range in the Sierra Nevada. The California population has been divided into two remnant populations, one in the northwestern part of the state and another small group in the southern Sierra Nevada believed to contain fewer than 500 individuals. |
| Marine Diesel Emissions | The EPA has failed to produce meaningful standards for controlling emissions from Category 3 marine diesel engines -- engines that power the largest oceangoing vessels such as tankers, freighters and cruise ships -- as required by the Clean Air Act. These marine engines burn residual fuel oil which contains sulfur, nitrogen, ash, and other substances that turn into sulfur oxide, nitrous oxide, and other pollutants and greenhouse gases when burned. Typical of shipping practices across the country, the ships steam into ports -- sometimes for days awaiting their turn to dock -- all the while running their engines to generate electricity to operate various ship systems (a practice called "hotelling"). People who live near ports are exposed to higher levels of diesel particulate matter and other pollutants, and suffer higher rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease. |
| Keeping Lake Tahoe Blue |
Situated between Nevada and California, near the crest of the Sierra Mountains, Lake Tahoe is one of the deepest and clearest lakes in the world, and only one of two EPA-designated "Outstanding National Resources Waters" in the western United States. Due to increasing human activities and urban development around the lake, however, its famed clarity, which once measured 100 feet deep, has declined 30% since 1968. Further, 75% of the region's environmental standards, including water quality and air quality standards, have not been achieved. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's new plan to allow the construction of 138 piers and the placement of several thousand buoys in Lake Tahoe's shorezone would only cause more harm to the Lake's fragile environment. These additional shorezone structures would impede the public's recreational access to the shorezone, degrade the lake's natural scenic beauty, and result in over 62,000 additional motorized boat trips on the lake per year, leading to more pollution of the lake's waters and further declines in lake clarity. This lawsuit challenges TRPA's plan to dramatically increase shorezone development, in violation of the agency's mandate to protect and restore Lake Tahoe's natural beauty and health. The agency also failed to perform adequate environmental studies of the new development, and relied on an unformulated and undefined "Blue Boating Program" to offset the increased pollution. Without further specifics, however, the Blue Boating Program cannot assure that the lake's clarity will not suffer further damage and that environmental standards will be met. This lawsuit seeks to stop additional shorezone development until TRPA can show that its plan will achieve the region's standards. In September of 2009, a federal dirstic court judge issued an injunction halting construction of new piers, boat ramps and other boat facilities, and placement of new buoys along the Lake Tahoe shoreline, pending resolution of the lawsuit. Earthjustice is suing on behalf of conservationists. |