Water

BP’s Disastrous PR Blowout

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZidQAf8epE] Even Fox News is berating BP for its callous and inapt public response to the oil blowout.  And for good reason.  As Newsweek says: This hasn’t been a good few weeks for Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP. In the weeks since the huge oil spill in the Gulf began, he has …

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Clearing the Waters

Law Week (subscription only) reports that: Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) introduced legislation April 21 that would amend the Clean Water Act to clarify and “reaffirm” U.S. jurisdiction over waters of the United States, including wetlands. The America’s Commitment to Clean Water Act (H.R. 5088) would remove the term “navigable waters of the United States” from …

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Gleick’s New Water Blog

Readers with an interest in water issues should take a look at Peter Gleick‘s new blog with the SF Chronicle.  Gleick is the head of the Pacific Institute — and, I’m happy to say, an ERG graduate.

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Dealing with water pollution from agriculture

Run-off from agricultural operations is a major source of water pollution, but remains essentially unregulated by the federal Clean Water Act. States have the legal authority to regulate agricultural pollution, but may be hampered by the lack clear models for doing so, as well as by political opposition. A new report from the Environmental Law …

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EPA drops the hammer on mountaintop removal

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Last week, I reported on EPA’s proposed veto of a Clean Water Act section 404 permit for a major mountaintop removal coal mining project in West Virginia. My view at the time was something along the lines of two-and-a-half cheers. I wrote that it was very good news, but didn’t articulate principals …

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Say goodbye to the mothball fleet

Settling litigation brought by environmental groups and later joined by state officials, the US Maritime Administration has agreed to remove the mothball fleet (also known as the ghost fleet) from Suisun Bay near San Francisco. The fleet consists of 52 obsolete warships that have been stored in the Bay for decades with little or no …

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EPA proposes to veto mountaintop removal project

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. EPA’s seesaw on mountaintop removal mining continues. Last time I wrote about this topic it was to note EPA’s approval of the Hobet 45 project. Today, EPA announced that it is proposing to veto the Spruce No. 1 project, as it had threatened last fall. Should EPA follow through on its proposal, …

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California’s Delta & Water Reforms: Now the Hard Work Begins

Last fall’s passage of landmark California legislation to “fix” the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and reform California water law was big news. But key, recent events demonstrate that the devil is truly in the details, and that while legislation certainly matters, it is the manner and means of executive branch implementation that ultimately spell success or …

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Delta NRC committee issues initial report

The National Research Council’s Committee on Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta released its first report this morning (also available through the National Academies Press web site, with registration). On a quick review of the summary, the conclusions are unsurprising — the Committee finds that the provisions of the Biological Opinions for …

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I Love That Dirty Water?

The New York Times supplies another excellent installment on its series about an often-overlooked environmental problem: outdated and overwhelmed municipal water and sewage systems. State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly. For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the …

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