Pollution & Health
Coeur 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 …
CONTINUE READING11th Circuit stirs the NPDES pot
Cross posted at CPRBlog. In a decision that shows the power of Chevron deference, Friends of the Everglades v. South Florida Water Management District, the 11th Circuit has upheld EPA’s water transfers rule, which provides that the act of moving water from one waterway to another does not require a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System …
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CONTINUE READINGCoeur Alaska–A Shifting Legal Position by the Obama Administration?
As the U.S. Supreme Court Term winds down, only one environmental case on the Court’s docket remains undecided: Coeur Alaska v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, No. 07-984. That case, which involves the relationship between the Clean Water Act’s water pollution control (NPDES) and its wetlands dredge-and-fill programs, arises in the context of a proposed gold …
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CONTINUE READINGBiofuels Could Be Good for Your Health (Especially If You Live in New York, Chicago, or L.A.)
A recent study at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab indicates that biofuels may have health benefits: Although there are a number of uncertainties that must be addressed for a more accurate picture, these early results show that a biofuel eliminating even 10-percent of current gasoline pollutant emissions would have a substantial impact on human health in …
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