Classic Villaraigosan Environmental Policy
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Los Angeles today, announcing an official EPA finding that Compton Creek, a portion of the Los Angeles River, is a "navigable water" of the United States. This finding means that Compton Creek can receive the protection of the Clean Water Act: most prominently, it means that any attempts to fill it or otherwise degrade it must receive a Section 404 permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers. It's an important protection: a nice...
CONTINUE READINGFHFA strangles PACE clean energy financing program
Yesterday, the Federal Housing Finance Administration, the agency that regulates bankrupt mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, issued a letter effectively destroying the promising energy efficiency and renewable energy financing program called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). I blogged about Fannie and Freddie's lender letters on the PACE program a few weeks ago. PACE operates as a traditional local government assessment on properties: governments raise ...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights: Part II
The previous post in this series introduced the idea of environmental property rights. There are a surprising number of EPRs. A complete listing would include at least nine kinds of EPRs: In addition to the public trust doctrine and tradable permits (which were discussed in the first part of the series), here are seven more: 1. Wetland mitigation credits. Mitigation credits allow the owner of a wetland to profit from restoring that wetland or creating an artificia...
CONTINUE READINGLegislative response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster
What's happening in Congress since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and the gusher that followed? There have been a lot of hearings, and a lot of bills introduced. Several are moving ahead. One has become law, one has been passed by the full House, and two have been reported out of Senate committees. 1) Both houses have passed, and the President has signed, Public Law 111-191, allowing the Coast Guard to take up to $100 million from the Oil Spill Liability Trust fund to re...
CONTINUE READINGAnti-AB 32 Campaign Should Be Interesting
The ballot initiative to suspend the implementation of California's landmark greenhouse gas legislation -- which qualified for the ballot last week -- should garner huge amounts of attention and spur job growth at least in the world of ballot campaigns. The California Public Policy Institute is predicting that proponents and opponents of the initiative (which doesn't have a number yet) may spend more than $150 million and set a new spending record on the campaign. T...
CONTINUE READINGAnother information gap in the Gulf
As the Washington Post points out today, BP's Regional Oil Spill Response Plan (large file) for the Gulf of Mexico was, like the NEPA analysis and the ESA analysis, wildly over-optimistic. The Response Plan is more realistic than the NEPA documents with respect to the possibilities. It does include worst case scenarios (Appendix H). The scenario for a blowout from an exploratory offshore well forecasts a discharge of up to 250,000 barrels (more than 10 million gallons) p...
CONTINUE READINGMayor Villaraigosa Betrays Environmentalism AGAIN
A few days ago, I noted that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa likes to talk a good game when it comes to Greening the city, but conveniently abandons plans when they become politically difficult or require anything like a normal attention span. I was more right than I thought. I mentioned that the Mayor had hired visionary planning director Gail Goldberg, but never supported her when she needed it. Well, now it turns out that Goldberg has “retired” effectiv...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights: Part I
This is the first of a four part series on environmental property rights (EPRs). EPRs are property rights that are designed to help protect the environment. They are either rights to prevent environmental degradation or limited rights to impair the environment. A couple of examples may help explain the concept. 1. The Public Trust Doctrine. Perhaps the EPR with the deepest historical roots is the public trust doctrine, which limits the development rights of publ...
CONTINUE READINGSome Thoughts About “The Pursuit of Happiness”
Without ever really stopping to think about it, I always assumed that the right to the pursuit of happiness meant freedom from governmental restrictions on your activities. (Since Thomas Jefferson was the author and was always extolling the life of the yeoman farmer, I guess I pictured this as the legal right to cut down part of the forest and start your own little farm.) So, in modern terms, it seemed to mean that the government can't stop you from "doing your own t...
CONTINUE READINGDeath of a water bond?
In an about-face, Arnold Schwarzenegger and California legislative leaders have called for removal of the $11.1 billion water bond from the November ballot and trying again in 2012. The legislature agreed last fall to put the measure on the ballot as part of what was billed as a comprehensive water reform package. Now, faced with substantial opposition to the bond, and an economic climate that's not likely to be friendly to any big bond measure, some of the same people w...
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