Chronology of Success 2018

‘Winning for the West’

February 2018

• Wildlife Services FOIA: We successfully settled a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case against Wildlife Services for its failure to timely and fully respond to three different FOIA requests about its Idaho predator killing activities.

April 2018

• Coeur d’Alene River/Galena Mine: In April 2018, we reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. Silver over ongong Clean Water Act permit violations at the Galena Mine in the Silver Valley of northern Idaho, under which U.S. Silver promised to cure its violations and pay for supplemental environmental projects.

May 2018

• Idaho Transportation Department Motor Oil Dumping: We settled this Safe Drinking Water Act case against the Idaho Transportation Department, requiring it to close and clean up 75 motor oil disposal sites at ITD facilities around the state, which threaten groundwater contamination and were supposed to be closed and de-commissioned a decade ago.
• Snake River/Devils Corral Water Right: We won a favorable decision in May from a hearing officer with the Idaho Dept. of Water Resources rejecting a decades-old application to appropriate all the water in Devil’s Corral Springs, near Shoshone Falls on the north side of the Snake River, based on lack of adequate and timely public notice and opportunity to object under Idaho’s public interest requirement for new water rights.

June 2018

• Wildlife Services Idaho Predator Killing: Chief Judge Lynn Winmill of Idaho district court issued a summary judgment decision agreeing with us that USDA Wildlife Services violated NEPA in failing to thorough address its aerial gunning of coyotes, raven poisoning, and other Idaho “predator damage control” actions which indiscriminately kill native wildlife across Idaho each year.

July 2018

• Conglomerate Mesa Mine Exploration/CA: In response to our protest, BLM backed off approving a gold mine exploration project on Conglomerate Mesa, a wild and remote area of the Inyo Mountains in the Eastern Sierras, near Death Valley National Park and Owens Valley.

September 2018

• Sage-grouse Oil and Gas Leasing: In sharp rebuke of the Trump Administration’s “energy dominance” agenda for public lands, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush of the District of Idaho issued a Preliminary Injunction in our favor, blocking the Zinke Interior Dept. from excluding public involvement and reducing environmental reviews of oil and gas leases across 67 million acres of greater sage-grouse habitats. The injunction resulted in BLM withdrawing over a million acres of proposed oil and gas leases slated for auction in December 2018.
• Gunnison Sage-Grouse ESA Listing: The U.S. District Court in Colorado rejected state and industry challenges to the 2014 Endangered Species Act listing of Gunnison sage-grouse as a “threatened” species and designation of critical habitat. Pursuant to our prior settlement in the same litigation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will proceed to develop a recovery plan for the imperiled bird.

October 2018

• Columbia/Lower Snake Temperature TMDL: U.S. District Judge Martinez in Seattle federal court granted summary judgment in our favor in this Clean Water Act case for Columbia Riverkeeper and several other groups, ordering EPA to end years of unlawful delay by issuing a “temperature TMDL”–Total Maximum Daily Load–to address lethally hot water temperatures in the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers that have caused significant harm to imperiled salmon and steelhead in recent years.
• Mogollan Rim/AZ: We reached settlement with U.S. Forest Service to rescind its recent grazing permits that unlawfully reopened grazing on a large area of the Tonto National Forest in the scenic Mogollan Rim area of the Colorado Plateau. The Forest Service closed the area to grazing in the 1970’s after it found significant degradation to streams, soils, and fish and wildlife habitat. Representing local landowners, we quickly challenged the Trump Administration’s attempt to reopen the area without public involvement or environmental review.

November 2018

• Triumph Mine/ID: The U.S. District Court gave final approval to our settlement with the State of Idaho in this case for Idaho Conservation League, alleging ongoing Clean Water Act violations from the abandoned Triumph Mine on the East Fork Big Wood River, near Sun Valley. The settlement requires Idaho agencies to obtain a CWA permit, increase monitoring of toxic discharges to the river and wetlands, and begin treating those discharges.

December 2018

• BPA Ratemaking Intervention: Marking a new phase of our efforts to publicize the high costs of lower Snake River dams–ecologically and economically–we were granted intervention in the 2018-2020 Bonneville Power Administration’s rate adjustment hearing, to represent Idaho Conservation League, Idaho Rivers United and Columbia Riverkeeper.