Richmond, VA— Today, the Fourth Circuit declined to reconsider its December ruling that the U.S. Forest Service lacked authority to authorize the Atlantic Coast Pipeline from crossing the Appalachian Trail. The Court also found that Atlantic and the Forest Service ignored routes that would avoid the National Forest.
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union, Sierra Club, ACLU of Texas, and ACLU of Northern California today filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s emergency powers declaration to secure funds to build a wall along the southern border. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition and was filed in the Northern District of California.
A federal court ruling today further delayed the proposed Keystone XL pipeline by reaffirming that TransCanada cannot conduct any construction activity on the controversial tar sands pipeline and continuing to block most pre-construction field activities, including construction of worker camps.
Using documents produced by a Sierra Club FOIA, E&E reported today that Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler worried about the optics of a meeting with Peabody Energy Corp. The coal company had invited Wheeler to speak at a Washington Coal Club luncheon. In 2018, Peabody spent $1,650,000 lobbying for policies that would make coal more profitable to produce including rolling back pollution protections.
Today, officials with the Department of the Interior confirmed that destructive seismic testing will not take place in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this winter.
A recent Sierra Club FOIA request of Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s emails and calendars show’s he is all too friendly with the industries he is supposed to be regulating. Here is a sampling of the findings from the first batch of newly-released documents:
Last Friday, Sierra Club filed a brief in the Ingham County Circuit Court case on DTE’s nearly billion-dollar proposed gas plant, arguing that MDEQ did not follow the law when approving the air permit. Sierra Club initiated this case in October, but this is the first time it has laid out its arguments for the Court.
The Sierra Club and partner organizations filed an appeal today challenging a key permit for a massive proposed petrochemical facility known as an “ethane cracker” in Belmont County. The plant is part of the industry’s push to steeply increase U.S. plastic production.
WASHINGTON, DC -- Today, a federal judge ruled that the Trump Administration’s attempt to add a xenophobic citizenship question to the 2020 Census is illegal. The Commerce Department announced the addition of the citizenship status question to the Census last March in an effort to intimidate and discourage noncitizens and their families from responding to the census, a move that would affect the total count of Americans. Without an accurate count of every living person in America, the incomplete data will skew the drawing of political districts, the number of seats each state has in the House…
WASHINGTON, DC - A federal court has ruled in favor of the Sierra Club that the Environmental Protection Agency must expedite the public release of approximately twenty thousand pages of emails, as well as calendars, for acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Air Office head Bill Wherum, and 23 other political staff involved in Wheeler’s rollbacks of critical public health and environmental safeguards.