Water
Mountaintop Removal: Incompatible with Climate Solutions and Incompatible with the Environment
Monday thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C. for the Appalachia Rising Rally to protest mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining. Activists dumped 1,000 pounds of Appalachia dirt on EPA’s front lawn before marching on the White House. At a sit-in at PNC bank, four people were arrested while protesting that bank’s financing of MTR coal mining. …
CONTINUE READINGTell Your Reverend To Go Jump In The Lake
Dan, your post is thoroughly persuasive to me, but I’m not sure that it would persuade many climate skeptics. There are two reasons for this: 1) You assume that there is at least a 50/50 chance of climate change occurring. That is a highly conservative assumption — except for climate skeptics. Most climate skeptics are …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Reverend Bayes Visits Lake Mead
Land Letter reports that Lake Mead has continued to recede in the face of an 11-year drought, as we are apparently heading into a La Nina period that will probably continue the drought. This will put some pressure on adaptation measures, particular in terms of Las Vegas: For Las Vegas, which draws 90 percent of …
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CONTINUE READINGDraft Delta flow criteria issued
Last year’s California water reform legislation directed the State Water Resources Control Board to issue new flow criteria for the Delta to protect public trust resources, which include but are not limited to the fish species protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. The deadline for the Board to adopt those criteria is next month. …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights (Part III)
An environmental property right (EPR) can be defined as an enforceable interest deriving from an environmental asset such as air quality or an undisturbed forest. EPRs are diverse and varied. Most EPRs are derived from statute rather than the common law, and many are of recent vintage. Some EPRs are marketable; others are not. Fundamentally, …
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CONTINUE READINGStay denied in appeal of offshore moratorium decision
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit heard argument today on the Obama administration’s request that it stay the District Court’s injunction of the 6-month deepwater oil development moratorium, and by a 2-1 vote quickly rejected the request. The moratorium halted any new drilling, and the granting of any new permits for …
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CONTINUE READINGClassic Villaraigosan Environmental Policy
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Los Angeles today, announcing an official EPA finding that Compton Creek, a portion of the Los Angeles River, is a “navigable water” of the United States. This finding means that Compton Creek can receive the protection of the Clean Water Act: most prominently, it means that any attempts to …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights: Part II
The previous post in this series introduced the idea of environmental property rights. There are a surprising number of EPRs. A complete listing would include at least nine kinds of EPRs: In addition to the public trust doctrine and tradable permits (which were discussed in the first part of the series), here are seven more: …
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CONTINUE READINGLegislative response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster
What’s happening in Congress since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and the gusher that followed? There have been a lot of hearings, and a lot of bills introduced. Several are moving ahead. One has become law, one has been passed by the full House, and two have been reported out of Senate committees. 1) Both houses …
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CONTINUE READINGDeath of a water bond?
In an about-face, Arnold Schwarzenegger and California legislative leaders have called for removal of the $11.1 billion water bond from the November ballot and trying again in 2012. The legislature agreed last fall to put the measure on the ballot as part of what was billed as a comprehensive water reform package. Now, faced with …
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