Water
An Unhappy Anniversary for Hetch Hetchy
Is It Time to Consider Restoring Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley?
December 19th marks a sad event in American environmental history. It was 100 years ago today that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act, authorizing the City of San Francisco to build a dam that would flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park in order to deliver water supplies to San Francisco. Contemporary …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy Did the Mono Lake Campaign Succeed?
What Makes for Successful Social Movements, Especially in Environmental Politics?
Environmentalists celebrate the campaign to save Mono Lake as one the iconic triumphs in US environmental history. As well they should. But why did it succeed? It’s a critical question not just for environmentalists, but for any scholar or member of social movements. In a previous post, I have suggested that the identity of the …
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CONTINUE READINGGreen Streets for Berkeley?
Low Impact Development (LID) or green infrastructure can be used to improve water quality in urban environments through the use of swales, bioretention basins, permeable pavement, and other approaches to managing stormwater. However, there can be challenges to actually putting green infrastructure in place. Max Gomberg and I recently published an Op-Ed in the San …
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CONTINUE READINGTackling Plastic Pollution in the Oceans
New Emmett Center report recommends top ten solutions for marine plastic debris
Ever wonder where the plastic crap that we generate winds up? Much of it ends up in the oceans. An estimated 20 million tons of plastic litter enter the ocean each year, much of it from land debris but also coming from fishing and aquaculture operations, shipping, and other marine sources. The stuff takes a really …
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CONTINUE READINGELQ’s Annual Review issue now available online
Every year, Ecology Law Quarterly publishes its Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law. The latest version is now available at ELQ’s web site. Check out these articles from the issue. You’ll find they cover a tremendous amount of ground in a way that is both educational and entertaining. And at the ELQ site …
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CONTINUE READINGMass. v. EPA bears fruit for environmental petitioners
Court rules that EPA must decide if new water quality standars are needed to protect the Gulf of Mexico
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. A US District Court in Louisiana recently ruled, in Gulf Restoration Network v. Jackson, that EPA must decide whether it has to impose new water quality standards for nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River watershed. Although that might seem far afield from the Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas emissions decision in Massachusetts v. …
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CONTINUE READINGProgress In Biosolids Management Illustrates Challenges For Innovation
Cross-posted at the ReNUWIt blog. A pilot project to convert biosolids from Delta Diablo Sanitation District’s wastewater treatment plant will begin next year in Antioch. The prize would be recovery of energy content from biosolids that, if successful and expanded to a national scale, will move the entire wastewater treatment industry in the direction of producing …
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CONTINUE READINGReforming Groundwater Adjudications: New Pritzker Environmental Policy Brief
A new report discusses groundwater in CA.
The Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment has released its latest Pritzker Environmental Law and Policy Brief, “Allocating Under Water: Reforming California’s Groundwater Adjudications.” California leads the nation in groundwater extraction, but it lags behind in updating groundwater-related laws and regulations. As a result, protracted litigation clogs the courts and often fails to protect water …
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CONTINUE READINGNinth Circuit Rejects Water Agency’s “Area of Origin” Water Rights Claim
Responding to the current drought conditions confronting California, state and federal water project officials have announced cutbacks in anticipated water deliveries this summer and fall from both the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project. It’s with that sobering backdrop that a recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit …
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CONTINUE READINGSore Winners
The government has filed a cert. petition in an environmental case (EPA v. Friends of the Everglades) with a really interesting procedural wrinkle. There’s more background about the case after the jump, but you don’t really need the details to understand the main issue. Here’s what you do need to know: 1. After EPA issued …
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