Water Law Commons^™

Is There A Right To Life For The Colorado River?, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

A recent lawsuit, declaring the Colorado River has legal rights of its own, received national attention in the New York Times and High Country News. While the lawsuit had no chance of success, it highlighted important issues.

Instream Flow Regulation: Plugging The Holes In Maine's Water Law, Bradford R. Bowman

Maine Law Review

States East of the Mississippi River have long relied on the traditional common law of riparian rights to manage their water resources. Towards the end of the Twentieth Century, rising demand for consumptive water use due to population growth, modern agricultural practices and industrialization began to conflict with environmental concerns. Throughout the East, states recognized the riparian doctrine's failure to provide a reliable means for allocating water during times of scarcity. In response, most of these states replaced common law water rights with regulatory water management systems. Maine is the only state that has not followed this trend. It is …

Watershed Based Policy Tools For Reducing Nutrient Flows To Surface Waters: Addressing Nutrient Enrichment And Harmful Algal Blooms In The United States, John A. Hoornbeek, Joshua Filla, Soumya Yalamanchili

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting And Maintaining Silicon Valley’S Liquid Gold, Paul Mark Fulcher

Master's Projects

Public sector leaders and decision makers in the California water industry have learned from previous severe drought conditions that to sustain water supplies during extremely dry seasons, there is a substantial need for behavioral changes associated with water conservation efforts among the businesses and residents of the community to maintain an adequate water supply. The intent of this study is to compare four California water agencies that have been designated as sustainable groundwater agencies (GSA), and determine what current programs and/or practices those agencies are using to meet the mandated requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 (Act …

Opening The Gates Of Cow Palace: Regulating Runoff Manure As A Hazardous Waste Under Rcra, Reed J. Mccalib

Michigan Law Review

In 2015, a federal court held for the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) may regulate runoff manure as a “solid waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). The holding of Community Ass’n for Restoration of the Environment, Inc. v. Cow Palace, LLC opened the gates to regulation of farms under the nation’s primary toxic waste statute. This Comment argues that, once classified as a “solid waste,” runoff manure fits RCRA’s definition of “hazardous waste” as well. This reclassification would expand EPA’s authority to monitor and respond to the nation’s tragically common groundwater-contamination emergencies.

Will Bell V. Town Of Wells Be Eroded With Time?, Sidney St. F. Thaxter

Maine Law Review

In 1989, the Maine Law Court issued a landmark decision regarding the ownership of the land between the mean high-water mark and the mean low-water mark (the intertidal zone) in a case entitled Bell v. Town of Wells.1 This decision was controlled, in part, by the 1986 decision in the same case. Bell I was decided following an appeal by the plaintiff-landowners from the lower court decision dismissing Counts I and II of their Complaint as “barred by sovereign immunity.” The lower court found that “the State has an interest in Moody Beach and in that sense it has title,” …

A Conceptual Framework For Sustainable Water Management: The Case Of The Piracicaba River Basin, Brazil [Abstract], Amós Nascimento

Amós Nascimento

2 pages.

Mass Displacement Of Destitute People: A Trigger For Non-Refoulement Protection?, Bernardo De Souza Dantas Fico, Leticia Machado Haertel

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper focuses on two problems around the mass displacement of people in extreme poverty: the characterization of such people as refugees and the application of the non-refoulement principle to mass displacements.

Extreme poverty is causal to grave human rights violations such as deprivation of water, of food, and of an adequate standard of living. These circumstances may reach a degree in which life in a country is unbearable — forcing people to move in order to enhance their likelihood of survival.

The classic understanding of the non-refoulement obligation, as enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, forbids states from returning …

Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on …

Water Security, Rhett B. Larson

Northwestern University Law Review

Climate change, as the dominant paradigm in natural resource policy, is obsolete and should be replaced by the water security paradigm. The climate change paradigm is obsolete because it fails to adequately resonate with the concerns of the general public and fails to integrate fundamental sustainability challenges related to economic development and population growth. The water security paradigm directly addresses the main reasons climate change ultimately matters to most people—droughts, floods, plagues, and wars. Additionally, this new proposed paradigm better integrates climate change concerns with other pressing global sustainability challenges—including that economic development and population growth will require 50% more …

Small Sustainability Supply: How Small Business And Lean Manufacturing Can Change Supply Chains, Carlos Lopez

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Benefitting From Sustainable Development, Victoria Frappaolo

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Batteries Included: Incentivizing Energy Storage, Lindsay Breslau, Michael Croweak, Alan Witt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Distributed Energy Storage (“DES”) technologies that allow households and businesses to store substantial amounts of electricity on site are rapidly advancing and could soon have dramatic impacts on the nation’s electricity generation, transmission, and distribution markets. These technologies could provide numerous benefits, including enhanced energy security, grid stability, and greater support for renewable generation technologies, but several obstacles are slowing their adoption throughout the country. Among these obstacles are stubbornly high manufacturing costs and the potential impacts of DES development on utilities and the traditional energy regulatory framework. Fortunately, policymakers in California, New York, Hawaii, and some other states are …

Appraising The Role Of The Ifc And Its Independent Accountability Mechanism: Community Experiences In Haiti’S Mining Sector, Kate Nancy Taylor

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Green Is Good: How Green Bonds Cultivated Into Wall Street’S Environmental Paradox, Luke Trompeter

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

When the European Investment Bank issued the first green bond in 2007, few imagined this debt instrument would attract mainstream investors. Designed to finance projects ranging from climate change prevention to clean transportation development, green bonds were geared for socially responsible investors concerned with our planet’s sustainability. However, by 2015, green bonds were issued by major corporations like Apple and municipalities like New York City at a record $40 billion. Major players on Wall Street have taken notice and look to cash in on the rapidly growing green bond market. With this new influx of investment and the bonds’ tax-exempt …

About Sdlp

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Kimberly Reynolds, Ryan Schmidt

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Can The Eu Carbon Tax The U.S. In Retaliation?, Annum Rashedi

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Regional Disputes: It Is Not Just Ground Beef, Nicholas W. Laneville

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Fighting The Wrong Fight: Why The Mlp Parity Act Is A Misguided Attempt At Achieving Renewable Energy Capital Raising Parity, David Powers

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Paris Agreement And The International Trade Regime: Considerations For Harmonization, Charles E. Di Leva, Xiaoxin Shi

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Never For-Gatt: What Recent Tbt Decisions Reveal About The Appellate Body’S Analysis Of Environmental Regulation Under The Wto Agreements, Ravi Soopramanien

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Few environmentalists have positive things to say on the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the environment. WTO legal obligations are frequently cited as the most significant impediment to a range of environmental initiatives, including notably meaningful international coordination to combat climate change, particularly through carbon tax initiatives, and imposition of electronic waste disposal export bans. In this vein, adverse findings of WTO dispute panels on environmental conservation measures tend to attract the ire of international civil society. The tensions between liberal trade and environmental protection can be traced back to the days of the General Agreement on …

About Sdlp

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Ryan Schmidt, Kimberly Reynolds

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Law Of The Seas: A Barrier To Implementation Of Sustainable Development Goal 14, Alexi Nathan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Key To Engaging With The Sdgs: Utilizing Rio Principle 10 To Succeessfully Implement The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, Taís Ludwig

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Lofty Goals In Dire Times: South Sudan's Obstacles To Achieving The New Sdgs, Harjot Dhillon

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Developing An International Carbon Tax Regime, Steven Specht

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

A North-South Struggle: Political And Economic Obstacles To Sustainable Development, Imrana Iqbal, Charles Pierson

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Lodging The Sustainable Development Goals In The International Trade Regime: From Trade Rhetoric To Trade Plethoric, Nasser Alreshaid

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.