Law Commons^™

Implementing The Public Welfare Requirement In New Mexico's Water Code, Consuelo Bokum

Publications

Despite the fact that the New Mexico legislature added a public welfare criterion to the water code over 10 years ago, the State Engineer Office has not addressed the application of the criterion by regulation and has only addressed the public welfare briefly in a few decisions. There is almost no case law in New Mexico addressing this issue. More and more participants, however, are raising public welfare in water rights protests. This paper addresses how the public welfare criterion has developed in western water law and proposes an approach for use of the criterion in New Mexico.

Wisdom Across The Atlantic: North America And The European Experience, Paul S. Kibel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Hunters Point: Energy Development Meets Environmental Justice, Alan Ramo

Publications

Community reaction to a proposal to build the first new power plant in decades in San Francisco has forced a California agency, the California Energy Commission (CEC), to hold the first ever evidentiary hearings explicitly on the issue of environmental justice. In the process, fundamental questions regarding civil rights, energy development, environmental decision-making and economic development in poor communities are being litigated. At stake is the public and economic health of a community and perhaps the conscience of our environmental regulatory system.

Fighting Back Against A Power Plant: Some Lessons From The Legal And Organizing Efforts Of The Bayview~Hunters Point Community, Clifford Rechtschaffen

Publications

Although the environmental justice movement catapulted into national consciousness during the 1990s, as reflected most notably in President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice, communities of color still face an uphill struggle fighting specific siting decisions. One community in the midst of such a battle is Bayview-Hunters Point, a low and middle-income community in San FrancIsco, overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. It is home to San Francisco's two existing power plants, and is burdened with a very high concentration of the City's dirty industries. In 1994, the San Francisco Energy Company proposed siting yet another power plant in …

Book Review, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice For The Sea Turtle: Marine Conservation And The Court Of International Trade, Paul S. Kibel

Publications

On April 10, 1996, the United States Court of International Trade (CIT) issued a landmark decision in Earth Island Institute v. Christopher. In this case, the CIT ordered the U.S. State, Commerce, and Treasury Departments to block the importation of shrimp from all nations that had not adopted adequate policies to protect sea turtles. Worldwide, over one hundred thousand sea turtles are killed each year as a result of shrimp-harvesting operations: the turtles drown trying to escape the shrimp nets. The CIT based its ruling on an interpretation of a 1989 amendment to the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), § …

Reconstructing The Marketplace: The International Timber Trade And Forest Protection, Paul S. Kibel

Publications

This Article proposes a new international regime to help recapture the lost value of native forests and promote global forest protection - the General Agreement on the Timber Trade.

Part I outlines the essential differences between native forest conservation and industrial forestry. Part II chronicles the ecological, social, and economic losses resulting from the destruction of native forests. Part Ill reveals the national and international components of the timber trade, and demonstrates how these components contribute to unsustainable logging practices. Part IV assesses the effectiveness of prior and ongoing international efforts to reform the global timber trade and promote sustainable …

Responsibility And Liability For Environmental Damage Under International Law, Sompong Sucharitkul

Publications

Replies to a questionnaire.

The Warning Game: Evaluating Warnings Under California's Proposition 65, Clifford Rechtschaffen

Publications

In 1986, California voters overwhelmingly approved the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, an initiative better known as Proposition 65. Voters passed the initiative to address the failure of government institutions to protect Californians from health threats posed by hazardous chemicals. Specifically, voters declared their rights to safe drinking water, to information about chemical exposures, and to strict enforcement of toxics laws. The statute has received extraordinary national attention for its innovative regulatory approaches, and has been alternatively labeled revolutionary and wildly irresponsible.

This Article analyzes how Proposition 65's warning requirement has fared in practice. Proposition 65 …

Uproar At Dancing Rabbit Creek: Battling Over Race, Class & The Environment, Colin Crawford

Publications

For the first five years of the 1990's, Noxubee County, Mississippi experienced a deeply divisive battle over the proposed siting there of one of the nation's biggest toxic waste dump and incineration facilities. Noxubee County, which is nearly 70% African-American, is also desperately poor. The fight over the proposed waste facility was in part a question of jobs versus environmental protection yet, as the selection below suggests, the waste fight was also influenced by long-standing animosities and social divisions-factors that, in my view, have been insufficiently appreciated by environmental justice activists and environmental lawyers alike.

Analyzing Evidence Of Environmental Justice: A Suggestion For Professor Been, Colin Crawford

Publications

One effect of the environmental justice movement has been to draw attention to the prejudices inherent in some modem environmental policies. These prejudices are most apparent when analyzing the location of hazardous waste facilities throughout the country. Several recent environmental justice studies have debated whether the location of these facilities has a direct correlation to the percentage of minorities in the surrounding areas.

This article critiques some of the methodology of these recent studies, most notably that of Professor Vicki Been, to determine the rationale governing the placement of hazardous waste facilities. Furthermore, this article suggests that researchers should expand …

Medical Monitoring And The Future Of Cercla: Reinvigorating The Superfund Law's Consequential Purpose, Colin Crawford

Publications

The Article advances in three main parts. Part II gives a brief overview of the reasons why most of the legal and transactional time, attention, and money spent during CERCLA's first fifteen years focused on who should pay for hazardous waste cleanup, and how much parties should pay once identified. The section briefly examines some of the understandable reasons why this occurred, but then argues that a revised CERCLA will be more effective if it concentrates instead on what costs should be covered. Part II concludes by demonstrating that such a re-focus would reflect CERCLA's original, radically consequentialist design. Part …

Africa And The Environment, Christian N. Okeke

Publications

No abstract provided.

Changing The River’S Course: Western Water Policy Reform, David H. Getches

Publications

Throughout the history of the West, water law and policy have had a profound influence on the environment of the region. Power production, agricultural irrigation, and economic expansion of the Columbia River Basin have depended upon the institutions of water policy, including the prior appropriation doctrine and major water development in the form of large dams and diversions. This has rendered the river incapable of sustaining the rich salmon populations that once were the mainstay of Northwest Indian culture and supported a major fishing industry. Professor Getches concludes that traditional instruments of water policy in the West--the beneficial use requirement …

Applying The Park City Principles To The Endangered Species Act, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.