Supreme Court

Blowing Off Steam: Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Clean Water Act

The Entergy case, which is now before the Supreme Court, involves EPA regulation of power plant’s cooling systems.  This is an important environmental issue because the cheapest systems kill acquatic life in the front-end intake process and then raise the temperature of water bodies in the back-end discharge.  More broadly, the case raises questions about whether …

CONTINUE READING

How do we decide what is a “Water of the United States”? Rapanos revisited

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinions in Rapanos v. United States in 2006, it has been unclear exactly how the U.S. is to go about evaluating which wetlands and tributaries of navigable waters are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.  Until recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asserted federal …

CONTINUE READING

TRENDING