Water
A Tale of Two Cities
The old adage is that all politics is local. So is much, if not all, environmental policy-making. Recent reports from two American cities vividly demonstrate the wide gulf that often separates local efforts to adopt sustainable environmental and energy policies. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal reports the City of Boulder, Colorado’s groundbreaking …
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CONTINUE READINGA smorgasbord of smelt and salmon news
There have been several developments in the Delta water saga since I posted on the request for relief from water quality standards submitted by the state Department of Water Resources and federal Bureau of Reclamation, and the potential for conflict between the water needs of smelt and of salmon.
CONTINUE READINGA Belated Victory for the Bush Administration
The Fourth Circuit has upheld the Army Corp permit program for mountaintop mining, notwithstanding claims that the Corps had violated NEPA, the Clean Water Act, and its own regulations. According to the dissent: Today’s decision will have far-reaching consequences for the environment of Appalachia. It is not disputed that the impact of filling valleys and …
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CONTINUE READINGHow do we decide what is a “Water of the United States”? Rapanos revisited
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinions in Rapanos v. United States in 2006, it has been unclear exactly how the U.S. is to go about evaluating which wetlands and tributaries of navigable waters are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. Until recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asserted federal …
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CONTINUE READINGMore hot links
Piggy-backing on Dan’s post below, here are some more blogs that cover environmental issues. Of course everyone has their own spin, and most of these blogs make no pretense of neutrality. Browse at your own risk. And please let us know what additional sites you find useful.
CONTINUE READINGMore on climate change and water management
I posted last week about the Secure Water provision of S 22, the Omnibus Public Lands bill that has passed the Senate, which would mandate federal planning for the effects of climate change on water resources. Federal water agencies are already looking at how water planning needs to adapt to climate change. The US Geological …
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CONTINUE READINGHeads out of the sand on water supply risks
Last month the Senate passed S. 22, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act. Buried in the depths of the lengthy bill is an important section called “Secure Water” which is intended to ensure that the nation understands and confronts the effects of climate change on water supply. It would require that the Department of Interior …
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CONTINUE READINGPreview of a long dry summer
It’s still the rainy season, but California’s drought is already beginning to affect operation of the state and federal water projects that divert water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds to serve cities and farms from the Bay Area to Southern California. Yesterday the California Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, …
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CONTINUE READINGKlamath takings litigation heads to the Oregon Supreme Court
As Dan Tarlock and I detailed in our book Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics, the Klamath Basin has been a hotbed for litigation on a variety of fronts since irrigation deliveries from the Klamath Reclamation Project were temporarily curtailed in the critically dry summer of 2001. Now …
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CONTINUE READINGOcean Acidification and the Clean Water Act
Dan’s post today on ocean acidification discusses findings by an international scientific panel that ocean acidification is a very serious problem. This week, according to the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the U.S. EPA just agreed to review whether and how the federal Clean Water Act can or should be used to address ocean acidifcation. …
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