Pollution & Health
New EPA air toxics report presents sobering assessment of cancer risk
A new U.S. EPA report released today presents a scary picture of our exposure to hazardous pollutants in our air. The National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment for 2002, which analyzed health data based on chronic exposure to air toxics for 124 pollutants for which those data are available. (The assessment’s name is potentially confusing; the report …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Invitation to Review the Supreme Court’s Environmental Record
This has been a blockbuster year in the U.S. Supreme Court for environmental law and policy. In the Term that concludes this month, the justices have decided five major environmental cases, involving many of the nation’s most important environmental laws. Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE), one of the sponsors of …
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CONTINUE READINGClean Water Restoration Act clears committee
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has voted 12-7 to send the Clean Water Restoration Act, S 787, to the full chamber. The bill would reverse the limitations imposed on the scope of the Clean Water Act by the Supreme Court in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army …
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CONTINUE READINGCoeur Alaska and mountaintop removal mining
As Dan noted below, yesterday the Supreme Court decided its final environmental case of the year, Coeur Alaska v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. While Coeur Alaska was not a mountaintop removal case, it does have ramifications for the argument about whether the Clean Water Act allows mountaintop removal coal mining. The central issue in Coeur …
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CONTINUE READINGNews Flash: Supreme Court Decides Coeur Alaska
In an opinion by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court decided two issues in this case, over a dissent by Justice Ginsburg. The first was whether the Clean Air Act gives authority to the United States Army Corps of Engineers, or instead to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to issue a permit for the discharge of …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Cotton Council ruling stayed
In National Cotton Council v. EPA, the Sixth Circuit in January overturned an EPA rule exempting pesticides applied in accordance with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) from the Clean Water Act’s permitting requirements. On EPA’s request, the court has now stayed the effect of that ruling until April 9, 2011, giving the …
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CONTINUE READINGBreathless in Bombay Redux: Corruption and Environmental Law
As I mentioned a few days ago, Bombay has 55,000 taxicabs that all run on CNG. (And as I updated, the municipal buses do, too — something else that India does better than the United States.). But Bombay’s taxis present India-watchers and scholars with something of a problem: if you believe the standard story about India, …
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CONTINUE READINGCongress Looks at Pharmaceuticals in the Water. Here’s What They Should Do.
Cross posted with permission from CPRBlog This week, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on the problem of waste pharmaceuticals ending up in the nation’s waterways. The issue sounds trivial – does Congress really need to spend its time worrying about people with a few left-over prescription pills flushing …
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CONTINUE READINGBreathless in Bombay
…is not just the name of a terrific volume of short stories by Murzban Shroff (mandatory reading if you come here): it is a condition that most residents here deal with daily. But the government is actually beginning to do something about it, which should be highly embarrassing to their US counterparts. This is a …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia environmental justice advocates sue Air Resources Board over climate scoping plan
UPDATES: California Air Resources Board Chair (and former UCLA colleague) Mary Nichols comments below. The Complaint in this action is available here (caption page separately available here). A coalition of California environmental justice advocates has filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the California Air Resources Board‘s scoping plan for AB 32, the landmark climate …
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