A Brazen California Water Heist Revealed, Prosecuted & Punished
San Joaquin Valley Water District Manager Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Steal Public Water for 20+ Years
Recently, former Panoche Drainage District general manager Dennis Falaschi pled guilty in federal district court in Fresno to having conspired to steal millions of gallons of publicly-owned water from California's Central Valley Project (CVP) for private gain. This surreptitious water theft apparently had been going on for well over two decades before Falaschi was finally brought to justice. The story of this water scandal was originally reported by former Sac...
CONTINUE READINGFinalists to be Trump’s Veep Pick
Not surprisingly, none of them augurs well for the environment, but some are worse than others.
According to NBC News, Trump’s search for a Vice Presidential candidate is focusing on three Senators (J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio & Tim Scott) and one governor (Doug Burgham). Trump has never been one to stick religiously to a set process, and he likes to surprise. So there’s a fair chance the choice will be someone else. The odds for the candidates on this list are high enough, however, to make their environmental views worth a serious look. I’ll discuss them...
CONTINUE READINGBig Oil Runs to the Supreme Court
Oil and gas companies want the justices to take up Honolulu’s climate liability case because this type of litigation is starting to gain strength.
The oil industry and its allies are attempting a full-court press to convince the Supreme Court justices they should shield them from climate liability lawsuits brought by cities and states throughout the U.S—and that they should do so now, before they face any court trials over climate-related damages. This unusual full-court press comes in the case of City & County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP, which is the public nuisance lawsuit filed by Honolulu in 2020 aga...
CONTINUE READINGWhy a Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush — Especially When the Issue is Climate Change
Climate action is too urgent to insist on waiting for perfect solutions
It’s an ancient dispute: Should we compromise on half-measures, or hold out until we can get something a lot better? Idealists argue for holding out. Pragmatist argue that half a loaf is better than none. Rather than rehearse familiar arguments, I want to focus specifically on climate change. In my view, holding out for ideal climate policies makes no sense. Because of the nature of climate change, delay is just too costly. When your house is on fire, you can’t w...
CONTINUE READINGHalftime Report: Environmental Bills Moving Forward
The UCLA Emmett Institute is tracking California environmental bills. In a year of tough budget choices, here are the notable bills that cleared Sacramento's first big legislative deadline.
Legislators reached the first deadline of the 2023-2024 legislative season last week—passage of bills out of their house of origin. As the name implies, this refers to Assembly bills working their way through the Assembly, and Senate bills moving through the Senate, culminating with floor votes which concluded last Friday, May 24th. This period is marked as the crossover, where the bills that passed off the floor of their house of origin, move to the other house fo...
CONTINUE READINGFinancing and Investment Strategies for an Equitable Clean Mobility Transition
New CLEE / Prospect Silicon Valley report outlines top strategies from a series of expert convenings
The transition to 100 percent zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales by 2035 will require massive investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout California and in other states that have adopted the same phaseout targets. A variety of structural barriers to charging access make California’s priority populations particularly reliant on public charging infrastructure to meet their ZEV needs. Ensuring that these Californians are included in and benefit from t...
CONTINUE READINGTrump’s War on Environmental Protection: A Chronology
Yes, there were over 100 environmental rollbacks. Here are the biggest.
As we face the possibility of another Trump Administration, it is worth remembering what he did the first time around. Some of us may have repressed the memory of Trump’s war against environmental protection in his previous term in office. Others may not have been following closely. As you can see below, Trump's campaign to purge America of environmental regulations — particularly those impacting the fossil fuel industry — was stern and unrelenting. 2017 February...
CONTINUE READINGEverywhere and Forever All at Once: PFAS and the Failures of Chemicals Regulation
Environmental law helped create a world awash in toxic chemicals. It's time to think about how regulation can operate as a form of green industrial policy for chemicals.
This post was originally published on the Law & Political Economy Blog as "How Environmental Law Created a World Awash in Toxic Chemicals." Earlier this spring, the Biden administration finalized two important rules targeting a small subset of so-called forever chemicals: one establishing drinking water standards for six such chemicals and the other designating two of the more prominent ones as hazardous substances under CERCLA (the Superfund Law). These che...
CONTINUE READINGDid the COVID Response Poison the Well for Climate Action?
Sadly, the answer may be yes, at least for one conspiracy-minded segment of the population.
One meme that seems to be popping up is that the “evils” of the COVID response reveal some dark reality behind climate policy. There’s obviously some kinship: public health responses to COVID and climate policy are both efforts to head off serious global risks — one that, in the case of COVID, has killed over a million Americans. But this doesn’t explain the conspiratorial overtones. The conspiratorial view of COVID policy popped up in a speech by Vice P...
CONTINUE READINGNew Report: Scoping the Public Health Impacts of Wildfire
A primer for stakeholders interested in the intersections of wildland fire and public health.
Wildfire smoke presents a population-wide health risk in California. Catastrophic wildfires are fueling complex and extensive public health impacts, including air pollution-related mortality and a growing toll on mental health. These risks result in hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated losses and carry stark environmental justice implications for vulnerable populations. At the same time, the policy landscape addressing this issue remains siloed on the state and f...
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