Law Commons^™

The Missing Element Of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis: Compensation For The Loss Of Regulatory Benefits, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Despite its critics, cost-benefit analysis remains a fixture of the environmental regulation calculus. Most criticisms of cost-benefit analysis focus on the impossibility of monetizing environmental and health amenities protected by regulations. Less attention has been paid to the regressive wealth-transfer effects of regulations foregone based on cost-benefit analysis. This regressive effect occurs as long as downwind communities that suffer health and harms from environmental contamination are generally less wealthy than the owners of pollution sources that avoid regulatory-compliance costs. The availability of compensation to pollution-victims has the potential to ameliorate this regressive effect. This Article recommends that the availability of …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food and environment are cultural stalwarts. Picture the red barn and solitary farmer toiling over fruited plains; or purple mountains majesty reflected in pristine waters. Agriculture and environment are core, distinct, American mythologies that we know are more intertwined than our stories reveal.

To create policy at the interface of such centrally important and overlapping American ideals, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal oriented policy.

American mythologies of food and environment …

Global Water Resources & Publications, Taryn L. Rucinski

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Before we as a society can begin crafting innovative legal solutions to help combat the global water crisis, researchers and experts in the field first need access to sound sources of scientific information. Despite the seeming simplicity of that goal, locating research about water, sanitation, and agricultural conditions, especially in developing countries, can be immensely challenging as it is complicated by issues of language, currency, scope, and accuracy. The purpose of this note is to provide practitioners with a list of free, high quality resources that should help make their research in this area a bit more accessible.

Plain Meaning, Precedent, And Metaphysics: Interpreting The “Pollutant” Element Of The Federal Water Pollution Offense, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article, the second in a series of five, examines the meaning of “pollutant” under the Clean Water Act. Congress and EPA have defined “pollutant” to mean a list of specific substances and broad categories of materials and wastes discharged into water, e.g., “biological materials” and “chemical wastes.” The definition is broad enough to encompass virtually all substances associated with human activity that are discharged to water, regardless of whether the substances cause pollution or are produced through human endeavor. Therefore, “pollutant” is rarely a limiting element. Instead, the issues with the definition of “pollutant” primarily address whether it includes …

Preface To Protecting The Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground takes a close look at the historical struggle of local governments to balance land development with natural resource conservation. This book updates and expands on his four previous books, which established a comprehensive framework for understanding the many ways that local land use authority can be used to preserve natural resources and environmental functions at the community level. Standing Ground describes in detail how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This body of work emphasizes …

Hot, Crowded, And Legal: A Look At Industrial Agriculture In The United States And Brazil, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Over the last sixty years, industrial agriculture has expanded in the United States and throughout the world, including in Brazil. Any benefit this expansion has brought comes at significant environmental and social costs. Industrial agriculture is a leading contributor to global climate change, air and water pollution, deforestation, and dangers in the workplace. This Article discusses the impact of industrial animal agriculture in the U.S. and Brazil. It also examines the laws pertaining to industrial agriculture in both countries and provides a comparative analysis of the two legal regimes. Finally, this Article concludes with the observation that although the price …

Katrina's Lament: Reconstructing Federalism, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The subject of stormwater management raises threshold questions about the federal system. Is the regulation of stormwater runoff and the environmental pollution it causes within the federal government's legal jurisdiction? Is it a matter reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment? Or is it a joint responsibility and, if so, precisely how is federal and state authority shared? How does the delegation of power by states to local governments to regulate the use of privately owned land affect the federal-state division of power? What limits should there be on local control of land uses that cause “nonpoint source” pollution, …

Of Zombie Permits And Greenwash Renewal Strategies: Ten Years Of New York's So-Called "Environmental Benefit Permitting Strategy", Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the CWA's provisions ensuring public participation in the permitting process and the history of EPA regulations implementing the public participation requirements. The article then examines the EBPS authorizing legislation, DEC's Technical Guidance concerning its implementation of the EBPS, and some instances of DEC's actual practice implementing the EBPS, and compares these procedures with the public participation requirements contemplated by both the CWA and New York State's own clean water implementing legislation, Environmental Conservation Law Article 17. The article concludes that the procedures adopted by the DEC are inconsistent with both the CWA's public participation requirements, as well …

The Supreme Court's Water Pollution Jurisprudence: Is The Court All Wet?, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this article sets the stage with a brief survey of federal water pollution control, focusing on the CWA. Part II examines statistical conclusions and inferences from a cursory review of the Court's CWA opinions. Part III examines some of the opinions in a more qualitative manner to determine whether the statistical conclusions withstand analysis and whether the Court understands the CWA. The latter determination requires examining the nature and severity of the Court's misinterpretations of the statute. Part IV examines the Court's decisions with anti-environmental results to determine whether they reflect an anti-environmental bias or the other …

The Current Controversy Regarding Tmdls: Contemporary Perspectives "Tmdls And Pollutant Trading", Ann Powers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The article first summarizes CWA requirements relevant to TMDLs and outlines elements of an effective trading program. It then examines the program recently established by the State of Connecticut to allow trading of nitrogen credits among sewage treatment plants on Long Island Sound to achieve an established TMDL, and the CWA issues presented. Finally, it gives a brief comparison to the program being designed for the Chesapeake Bay, for which no TMDL has been established. Current brief descriptive summaries of several often cited programs are appended.

Introduction: Considering The Trend Toward Local Environmental Law, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this symposium issue of the Pace Environmental Law Review we take a close look at the advent of local environmental law. With the editors of the Review and a number of distinguished scholars and practitioners, we define what this new field is and consider what it means for public policy and the practice of law. The intent of this issue is to invite lawyers, scholars, practitioners, legislators, regulators, students, and citizen leaders to consider this burgeoning new field: local environmental law. It is my task to introduce the reader to the field and frame the issues for its further …

United States Pollution Control Laws, Jeffrey G. Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The environmental assessment process established by NEPA has been a success and was a step forward on the path of integrating environmental and economic policy. The national pollution abatement laws that were adopted in the decade after NEPA, however, operate in a very different fashion. They, too, have been very successful in a number of important respects, but have achieved less than we had hoped for because of certain flaws in their design. To analyze these laws for us, I would like to introduce another colleague, Professor Jeffery Miller, who has also travelled in Argentina. In fact, Professor Miller conducted …