NEPA
Golf. Trump. Lies. And NEPA.
What more could you ask for in a single court opinion?
In a Monday ruling, Judge Reyes told the government to stop work on Trump’s plan to demolish a D.C. public golf course and replace it with one for pro tournaments. There are intriguing legal issues: whether a President’s social media posts can establish the basis for judicial review; whether golfers have standing to sue to preserve an existing course; how to deal with apparent dishonesty by government lawyers; and last but not last, whether the Supreme Court has eliminated NEPA’s segmentation doctrine. All in a beautifully written district court opinion.
CONTINUE READINGAddressing fire in the National Forests
Reforming National Forest management to improve fire resilience
I wrote earlier about an article I co-authored with Dave Owen on reforming wildfire law. In particular, we identified changes to federal land management, federal air quality law, land-use law, and insurance law to address the interlocking legal and policy challenges wildfire presents. But the scope of our piece necessarily meant limiting the level of …
Continue reading “Addressing fire in the National Forests”
CONTINUE READINGUnpacking the Senate Permitting Reform Bill: NEPA
NEPA provisions are substantial in their changes, but (mostly) leave the core of the Act in place
I’ve already written some about the Senate permtting reform bill, including the provisions on NEPA remedies. In the next few posts I’m going to take deep dives on Titles I through IV of the bill, which are the primary changes to environmental law. First, I’ll cover the changes to NEPA in Title I besides NEPA …
Continue reading “Unpacking the Senate Permitting Reform Bill: NEPA”
CONTINUE READINGPermitting Reform Bill: NEPA Remedies
Efforts to tailor remedies for NEPA violations address an important issue, but may have misfired
To me the most important change in environmental law from the permitting reform bill is the effort to restrict remedies for NEPA violations. I’ve written before about why I think this is important work to do, and why it is important to do it well. And there are good components to the proposal on the …
Continue reading “Permitting Reform Bill: NEPA Remedies”
CONTINUE READINGA quick overview of the Senate permitting reform bill
Senate bill has major changes for NEPA, some changes for Clean Water Act
The bipartisan permitting reform bill – at least the Senate version – is out. You can see it here. My initial take on the bill is below, and I hope to do some more detailed examination of specific provisions soon. My focus will be on the environmental law side, not the transmission side, since that …
Continue reading “A quick overview of the Senate permitting reform bill”
CONTINUE READINGMoving Environment Assessment Outside the Permit Process
Streamlining is good but shouldn’t become an excuse for just ignoring the environment.
I’m very sympathetic to arguments that we’re unable to build important infrastructure, whether housing or transmission, because we have too much red tape. There’s a real temptation, however, to throw out the environment a baby with the procedural bathwater. It’s hard not to suspect that sometimes that’s the point and permit reform is just an effort to avoid considering environmental harms. Be that as it may, it’s easy to embrace restrictions on environmental reviews without giving enough thought to what we may be losing – and how we might be able to get the best of both worlds. As Eric Biber has discussed in many of his posts, many proposed permit reforms are not well-designed to achieve their ends. A more fundamental problem is that we’re not always sure we’re addressing the right part of the problem.
CONTINUE READINGA Better Approach to Wildfire on Public Lands
Why our proposal improves on Fix Our Forests.
This blog post was co-authored with Dave Owen, at UC Law SF. The draft article this blog post series is based is here. This is the seventh in a series of blog posts on our proposal to reform wildfire law in the United States. The first post is here. The second post is here. The …
Continue reading “A Better Approach to Wildfire on Public Lands”
CONTINUE READINGWildfire and National Forests
Reforming federal forest management to address wildfire
This blog post was co-authored with Dave Owen, at UC Law SF. The draft article this blog post series is based is here. This is the third in a series of blog posts on our proposal to reform wildfire law in the United States. The first post is here. The second post is here. Federally …
Continue reading “Wildfire and National Forests”
CONTINUE READINGThe Challenges of Wildfire
Why wildfire management is so difficult to reform
This blog post was co-authored with Dave Owen, at UC Law SF. The draft article this blog post series is based is here. This is the second in a series of blog posts on our proposal to reform wildfire law in the United States. The first post is here. Why is fire such a hard …
Continue reading “The Challenges of Wildfire”
CONTINUE READINGFixing Wildfire Law
The urgent challenge of reforming how we manage wildfire
This blog post was co-authored with Dave Owen, at UC Law SF. The draft article this blog post series is based is here. Every year brings another reminder of why fire is at the top of environmental and natural resource issues for the United States, and how our legal system struggles to adjust to fire. …
Continue reading “Fixing Wildfire Law”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
The Drain is a roundup of climate and environmental news from Legal Planet delivered to your Inbox once a week.
