Water wars, eastern style
Those of us in the west have grown used to thinking of water wars as a regional specialty. But they happen in the east too. Florida, Alabama, and Georgia have been in court for nearly 20 years fighting over the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system, popularly known as the ACF. On Friday, a federal judge handed the downstream states, Florida and Alabama, a major victory in the latest battle. The Army Corps of Engineers manages a series of federal ...
CONTINUE READINGIs India Going Green?
According to a story in today's NY Times, India is making a major push toward renewable energy: "We need to get our act together," said Gauri Singh, joint secretary in India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, which was set up 26 years ago, "because India is growing faster than anyone can imagine. Renewable energy will have to supplement conventional power supply. "Our priority is to achieve energy security and self-reliance. Climate change is not the main driver ...
CONTINUE READINGFour Years Later, and Still No Real Plan
A new report by the National Research Council gives "thumbs down" to the Army Corps' plans for preventing another Katrina disaster. This is the kind of planning that we simply have to learn to do right-- not just for the sake of those immediately at risk, but because rising sea level and more extreme weather events due to climate change will require similar planning elsewhere. The NRC pans the Corps' plan in no uncertain terms: Despite being given authority from the U...
CONTINUE READINGCronkite on Climate
Some people are calling him "the last journalist" because his breed of even-handed, fact-based report seems to be an endangered species. Be that as it may, it's interesting to note that he spoke out on the subject of climate change a few years ago in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Not surprising, his perspective was different from that of the Bush Administration, which made a practice of scoffing at the "reality-based community": The contempt of the Bush adm...
CONTINUE READINGDeputy Director Named for CEQ
The White House has announced that Gary S. Guzy, former general counsel and counselor to the administrator of EPA during the Clinton administration and previously a senior attorney in DOJ's environmental division, will be named deputy director of the Council on Environmental Quality. Guzy has also been a partner at Foley Hoag, a consultant to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and a Visiting Scholar at the Environ...
CONTINUE READINGWaxman Markey, the Clean Air Act and State Climate Legislation
As I suggested last week, the prospects for the Waxman-Markey bill passing Congress this term don't seem particularly high. President Obama is expending significant political capital on health care reform. The Senate is occupied with the Sotomayor Supreme Court hearings. And the politics of climate legislation may be even tougher in the Senate than in the House. All is not lost, however. Groundwork laid by states and environmental groups during the long years of...
CONTINUE READINGBirthing Respect
I was a whale lawyer for years (or, more correctly, a lawyer for people working to protect whales and their habitat). I therefore can't resist the urge to link to this terrific piece in the NY Times magazine on the developing relationship between gray whales and their human fans in Laguna San Ignacio, one of the few remaining gray whale nurseries in the eastern Pacific. Each year, whales migrate thousands of miles down the coast of North America, from Alaska to ...
CONTINUE READINGBack to the future in northwest federal forests
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today announced the withdrawal of the Bush administration's last-minute revisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. Interior will also ask a federal court to vacate the 2008 modification of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, and will review the 2008 spotted owl recovery plan, heavily criticized by outside scientists, which was used to justify the changes to critical habitat and the Northwest Forest Plan. Salazar explained that the B...
CONTINUE READINGA Silver Lining to the Supreme Court Term for Environmentalists?
In assessing the environmental train wreck that was the just-concluded Supreme Court Term, the question arises: is there anything from that Term from which environmental interests can take comfort? The answer is at least a qualified "yes." Somewhat lost in the attention focused on the justices' five major environmental decisions--all of them clear defeats for environmental interests--is the fact that the Roberts Court showed far greater solicitude toward state law and...
CONTINUE READINGCynthia Giles Tackles Busy Agenda in High-Ranking EPA Post
The following was written by Andrew Cohen for Berkeley Law's Newsroom. As the new enforcement chief for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Cynthia Giles [Berkeley Law alum of] ’78 is anything but naïve about the enormity of her position and the pressure it brings. “We have a lot of important work to do,” says Giles, nominated by President Obama as head of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and confirmed by the Senate in May. “Our Administrator h...
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