Ninth Circuit rules Clean Water Act permit required for indirect discharge to ocean waters
Maui County can't evade permitting requirements by sending wastewater to injection wells hydrologically connected to ocean waters
It was a great exam question (at least I thought so -- you'll have to ask my Environmental Law and Policy students if they agree): does the disposal of treated wastewater from a municipal wastewater treatment plant into the ground through injection wells located a short distance from the ocean require an NPDES permit under the Clean Water Act? Like most great exam questions, this one was drawn from real life. That means it has a real (albeit not necessarily conc...
CONTINUE READINGEight Setbacks for Trump
Trump hasn’t had things all his own way. Not by any means.
The Trump Administration has begun some bold initiatives but it’s too soon to know how they will fare. It also had some early success with blocking Obama’s regulation in Congress. But it has also had some significant setbacks, with courts or Congress rejecting positions it had embraced. Those setbacks make it clear that, bad as Trump is, he’s not likely to have things all his own way. Here are some of the major setbacks. The Tenth Circuit held that the governm...
CONTINUE READINGScott Pruitt: “What, me worry?”
The right question about greenhouse gas emissions is not whether there is an "ideal" global temperature regime, but what problems rapid regime shifts produce
(Readers of a certain age will understand the reference, and see the resemblance. If that's not you, never mind. But read on for a little less snark and a little more analysis.) According to the Washington Post, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wondered in a television interview Tuesday whether global warming "necessarily is a bad thing," characterizing as "fairly arrogant" any thought that "we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 210...
CONTINUE READINGTrump Administration to Hold California Hearing on Offshore Oil Drilling Proposal
Sacramento Hearing Likely to Be Both a Raucous and Fundamentally Flawed Affair
Legal Planet colleague Eric Biber this week has published a series of posts on the Trump Administration's controversial--and deeply flawed--proposal to open most of the nation's Outer Continental Shelf to offshore oil and gas development. I won't attempt to retread the ground Eric has ably covered, but want to highlight a major upcoming and related event in California. As part of the U.S. Department of the Interior's offshore leasing program under the Outer Con...
CONTINUE READINGThe impact of Trump’s offshore leasing plans
The Administration's leasing proposals are not likely to produce an offshore oil and gas boom unless other factors change
This post is the last in a three-part series examining the implications and context of the Trump Administration’s announcement of a proposal to dramatically expand offshore oil and gas development in the United States. The first post focused on the legal context; the second one on the political context. This last post synthesizes the law and politics and provides an assessment of the future impacts of the proposal. In my last post, I noted the ability of Nevada ...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Methane, Black Carbon, and HFCs
Post #5 in a Series on California Climate Policy by Ken Alex, Senior Policy Advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown
[This is the fifth post in a series expressing my view of why California’s actions on climate change are so important and how they will change the world. The introductory post provides an overview and some general context.] One of the most important actions we can take to combat climate change is to halt the emission of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). Once again, California is leading world action. The most prevalent climate pollutant, of course, is c...
CONTINUE READINGInternational Court of Justice recognizes and values ecosystem services (sort of)
In a judgment announced on February 2nd, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the very first time decided a compensation claim for environmental damage. Equally important, it took a close look at whether ecosystem goods and services are compensable under international law. The decision is both carefully considered and deeply frustrating. There have, of course, been international proceedings in the past addressing the issue of whether and how much to compensate...
CONTINUE READINGThe politics of Trump’s offshore leasing proposal
Widespread political opposition at the state level poses major obstacles to federal plans
This post is the second in a three-part series looking at the Trump Administration’s announcement of plans to vastly increase offshore oil and gas drilling. The first post, here, focused on the legal context for those announcements. In this post, I’ll discuss the political context. In my last post, I’ll conclude with an analysis of the prospects that the announcement will lead to substantial changes in offshore oil and gas development in the United States. ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Administration’s offshore oil and gas leasing proposal
Offshore leasing system requires long, complex legal process before drilling can occur
A few weeks ago the Trump Administration announced a new proposed plan to drastically increase the amount of offshore areas available for leasing for oil and gas development – essentially opening up almost all of the waters off of the lower 48 states. The announcement at the time attracted a lot of media attention, but I wanted to put the announcement in some context. Despite the initial hype about the order, I’d like to explain in a little more detail precisely...
CONTINUE READINGThe Obesity Epidemic
Obesity is bad for public health, bad for the environment. What can be done?
[There was a technical problem with the version of this posted earlier.] Obesity is an issue that gets sporadic media attention. But it’s a serious problem, and it’s getting worse. An ever-increasing proportion of the population suffers from obesity. If present trends continue, over half the U.S. population will be obese in another twenty years or so. This trend is especially troubling because individual obesity is difficult to reverse. There is no easy answer ...
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