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Te US Environmental Protection Agency, under threat of legal action by medical, community, and environmental groups, has reclassified California's San Joaquin Valley as a 'severe' region for ozone air pollution.

"These judges will be deciding for decades whether or not to uphold the very laws Americans depend on to protect their environment and public health," said Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel.

The federal District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hear oral arguments today in an Earthjustice case challenging a 1999 Interior Department regulation that allows coal companies to collapse the surface under homes, schools, national parks, and other sensitive areas that Congress protected.

On behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Forest Guardians, Earthjustice is challenging a district court ruling that grazing, which admittedly violates the Endangered Species Act, may continue unabated in certain parts of national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

Earthjustice attorneys presented oral arguments in defense of the roadless forest rule before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle.

Conservation groups filed suit to stop logging and road construction in eastern Washington where last woodland caribou in continental US live.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a waiver of clean air standards for airborne particles in Imperial Valley, California, leaving valley residents at risk from a highly dangerous class of pollutants.

Faced with the threat of a lawsuit, officials with the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District have agreed to settle with four community groups a dispute about the implementation of six air pollution control measures.

Environmental and public interest groups filed suit in against US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick for stonewalling public access to the US negotiating position on the US-Chile Free Trade Agreement.