Water
Good fish news of the week
We know that environmentalists in general, and environmental lawyers in particular, typically seem to have nothing but bad news on their minds. So we’re always happy to convey good news when we hear it. This week, it comes out of northern New York, where the USGS reports that wild-spawned Atlantic salmon have been found in …
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CONTINUE READINGAtrazine in drinking water
Atrazine is suddenly very much in the news. Today’s New York Times features a major story about whether the EPA’s current standard for acceptable levels of atrazine in drinking water is tight enough to protect human health. Yesterday’s Peoria Journal carried a story about a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois state court against Syngenta, …
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CONTINUE READINGSurprise! This Was World Water Week
I have to admit that World Water Week slipped by me unnoticed. (I guess I “didn’t get the memo.”) But it’s not too soon to start thinking about next year: The 2010 World Water Week theme will deal with the consequences of water use on the status of the resource itself. Water quality and water …
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CONTINUE READINGWant more mercury? Eat fish
The US Geological Survey yesterday issued a report on mercury contamination in fish and stream beds across the US. The news is not good — at more than one quarter of the sampled sites, mercury levels in fish exceeded EPA’s acceptable standard, which means that it is unhealthy to eat an average amount of those …
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CONTINUE READINGTime for Fundamental Water Reform in California?
Yesterday was a most interesting, and potentially-momentous, day for water policy in California. Taking center stage at the state Capitol in Sacramento was a joint hearing of California State Senate and Assembly environmental committees to consider a package of bills addressing the chronic environmental ills that have befallen the California Delta and failures in state …
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CONTINUE READINGI’ll gladly tell you Thursday if your beach is safe today…
Each year, NRDC publishes a report on the sometimes-foul state of our beachwater nationwide. This year’s Testing the Waters analysis shows that people are still regularly swimming in water with unsafe levels of E Coli and other pathogens, and that thousands of people likely get ill every year from a day at the beach. In the northeast …
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CONTINUE READINGUS won’t appeal Casitas decision
Last month, when he posted about the Supreme Court taking up the Florida beach renourishment case, Rick noted the possibility that the Court might hear another takings case, Casitas Municipal Water District v. U.S., 543 F.3d 1276 (2008). Indeed, the Casitas case, in which the Federal Circuit held that the physical takings doctrine applied to …
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CONTINUE READINGWater wars, eastern style
Those of us in the west have grown used to thinking of water wars as a regional specialty. But they happen in the east too. Florida, Alabama, and Georgia have been in court for nearly 20 years fighting over the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system, popularly known as the ACF. On Friday, a federal …
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CONTINUE READINGFour Years Later, and Still No Real Plan
A new report by the National Research Council gives “thumbs down” to the Army Corps’ plans for preventing another Katrina disaster. This is the kind of planning that we simply have to learn to do right– not just for the sake of those immediately at risk, but because rising sea level and more extreme weather …
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CONTINUE READINGCorps proposes to require individual permits for mountaintop removal mining
Last month, the Obama administration announced an interagency agreement to develop a coordinated policy on mountaintop removal mining. Now the Army Corps of Engineers has taken the first step toward implementing that promise. The Corps has been permitting mountaintop mining through Nationwide Permit 21, a process that provides little opportunity for public input and environmental …
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