Western Watersheds Project v. Bureau of Land Management

A federal district court in Nevada denied a motion filed by several environmental nonprofits to preliminarily enjoin the BLM from authorizing the site clearing and construction of a wind energy facility in the state, holding that the groups were not likely to succeed on their claim that an EIS was required under NEPA. The court held that BLM’s decision to forgo issuing an EIS was justified by the adoption of significant mitigation measures to offset potential environmental impacts. In addition, BLM sufficiently considered the cumulative impacts of the project and took the requisite “hard look” as required. Further, the court held that denial of the motion would not result in irreparable harm to several species and that a delay of the program would harm federal renewable energy goals.