Water
The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009–A Macro and Micro View
I’d like to follow up on Sean Hecht’s recent posting concerning Congressional passage and President Obama’s signing into law of the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009. This massive bill designates two million acres of wilderness in nine states as permanently off-limits to development, and increases the number of river miles protected under the …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA asserts itself on mountaintop removal mining
EPA is finally flexing its muscle on mountaintop removal mining, taking on the Corps of Engineers and stepping in for states that have been reluctant to attack the practice. Mountaintop removal mining involves blasting the tops off of mountains, typically in Appalachia, to get at coal. The ecological problems are less about removal of the …
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CONTINUE READINGExxon Valdez: 20 Years Later – Lessons Learned
Today commemorates a sad and calamitous event in American environmental history: the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The key facts of that ecological disaster, recounted in yesterday’s New York Times, are by now well-known: the spill of 11 million gallons of crude oil into near-shore ocean waters, …
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CONTINUE READINGPollution sniffing robofish
Monitoring has always been a big challenge both for enforcement of water pollution laws and for understanding the effect of pollution on aquatic ecosystems. Now a group of scientists in the UK may have an answer: robotic fish the size of seals which can swim around on their own, equipped with chemical detectors to sense …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmentalists v. Environmentalists: The Case of Alternative Energy
A shift to alternative forms of energy and away from conventional carbon-intensive fuels like coal forms the centerpiece of virtually all carbon-reducing strategies. 28 states have enacted mandatory renewable portfolio standards (RPS) (requiring their utilities to procure a set percentage of energy from alternative/renewable sources); the President’s stimulus package includes block grant money and tax …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Salmon Crisis – Searching for Solutions
All the available scientific evidence indicates that California’s salmon populations are in deep trouble: several sub-species are currently listed as threatened or endangered under federal and state endangered species laws; the commercial salmon fishing season off the Northern California coast will be shut down for the second year in a row; and the resulting economic …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Environmental Law Socialist?
Conservatives might be seeking a spiritual leader, organizing principle and fresh identity, but they at least seem to have settled on a favorite rhetorical ogre: socialism. As in, Democrats are intent on forcing socialism on the “U.S.S.A” (as the bumper sticker says, under the words “Comrade Obama”). This trend, as reported by the New York …
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CONTINUE READINGDelta news roundup
It’s been a busy and discouraging ten days for those interested in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as either an ecosystem or a water source. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the return of fall chinook salmon to the Sacramento River hit a record low last year. The Pacific Fishery Management Council released a gloomy preseason …
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CONTINUE READINGOf Smelt, Salmon & Whales
The inter-connectivity of our ecosystem has been underscored by new and alarming scientific findings. Recently, the National Marine Fisheries Service has reported that the dramatic, well-documented declines in Pacific salmon fisheries may lead to the extinction of Pacific killer (Orca) whales. This killer whale population, a unique species, is already endangered under federal law, and …
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CONTINUE READINGBlowing Off Steam: Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Clean Water Act
The Entergy case, which is now before the Supreme Court, involves EPA regulation of power plant’s cooling systems. This is an important environmental issue because the cheapest systems kill acquatic life in the front-end intake process and then raise the temperature of water bodies in the back-end discharge. More broadly, the case raises questions about whether …
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