Toothless Toxic Regs

The NY Times "economic scene" column has an interesting column about toxics.  Current regulations are largely ineffectual.  Case in point: zinc in denture cream, which turns out to be at a high enough level to cause neurological damage for some users.  The product stayed on the market for years despite rising evidence, and some of it is still on the shelves: In 2008, Dr. Sharon Nations of Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and other researchers published a study in...

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Deja vu all over again

Remember the Sagebrush Rebellion and the County Supremacy Movement? They were attempts in the 1970s-80s and 1990s, respectively, by state and local governments in the west to assert control over federal lands. They didn't make any legal progress because of the pesky Supremacy and Property Clauses of the US Constitution, which declare that the federal constitution is the supreme law of the land and give Congress plenary power over the property of the United States, includ...

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Bully pulpit for nature

For those tired of the wrangling in Washington over legislation, there is some good news. For some time now, the Obama Administration has been taking matters into its own hands on the regulatory front (including fuel efficiency / greenhouse gas emission regulations for cars that should be finalized any day; greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for large stationary sources; and moving, albeit at a snail's pace as Cara and Sean have pointed out, to impose new so...

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Giving the Coal Industry the Byrd

Senator Byrd (D-W. Va.) has long by a mainstay of the coal industry.  Actually, you could add the phrase "has long been" to almost any sentence about Byrd -- he's been around for a heck of a long time.  After all, he's served longer than any member of Congress in history.  You might expect him to be a dinosaur, with views fossilized sometime around the same time that the coal beds of West Virginia formed.  (OK, if you want to get technical the coal beds predate the...

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EPA proposes to veto mountaintop removal project

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. EPA's seesaw on mountaintop removal mining continues. Last time I wrote about this topic it was to note EPA's approval of the Hobet 45 project. Today, EPA announced that it is proposing to veto the Spruce No. 1 project, as it had threatened last fall. Should EPA follow through on its proposal, this would be its first veto of a Clean Water Act section 404 permit since 1990. Publication of the proposal in the Federal Register will start a 60-day p...

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California’s Delta & Water Reforms: Now the Hard Work Begins

Last fall's passage of landmark California legislation to "fix" the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and reform California water law was big news. But key, recent events demonstrate that the devil is truly in the details, and that while legislation certainly matters, it is the manner and means of executive branch implementation that ultimately spell success or failure for most environmental laws. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders recent...

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If not at Yucca Mountain, then where?

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Last August, Dan announced "The Death of Yucca Mountain," pointing to a news story in which Senator Harry Reid ( D - Nev.) declared that he had dealt a fatal blow to plans to store high-level radioactive waste in a repository there. The Department of Energy sought to pull the plug on the project once and for all early this month, when it filed a motion to withdraw its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license for a Yucca ...

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Health Care Reform could help the environment

As Streetsblog noted, the newly-passed health care reform contains some grant money for nonprofits, Indian Tribes, and state and local governments to promote increased physical exercise and to create "the infrastructure to support active living." Overall, this provision could provide local governments with extra money they desperately need to create more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly land use planning and projects. Local land use planning is critical to developing the ...

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Death of a Great American

Stewart Udall died today.  His legacy, as the N.Y. Times recounts, surrounds us: As interior secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he presided over the acquisition of 3.85 million acres of new holdings, including 4 national parks — Canyonlands in Utah, Redwood in California, North Cascades in Washington State and Guadalupe Mountains in Texas — 6 national monuments, 9 national recreation areas, 20 historic sites, 50 wildlife refuges and 8 nationa...

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Delta NRC committee issues initial report

The National Research Council's Committee on Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta released its first report this morning (also available through the National Academies Press web site, with registration). On a quick review of the summary, the conclusions are unsurprising -- the Committee finds that the provisions of the Biological Opinions for protecting Delta smelt and winter-run chinook salmon are scientifically justified and concep...

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