International Law Instruments To Address The Plastic Soup, 2019 William & Mary Law School
International Law Instruments To Address The Plastic Soup, Luisa Cortat Simonetti Goncalves, Michael Gerbert Faure
William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review
The problem of plastic pollution in the oceans has been increasingly evident after 1997, when the great concentrations of plastics in the oceans were initially publicized. Still, there is a substantial lack of scientific data and research about the sources of plastic pollution, destinations and consequences to nature and human life. The only certainty is that the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean is alarming and likely will not decrease anytime soon because of its durability and large range of use. Estimates show that, each year, at least 8 million tons of plastics leak into the ocean …
The Fight Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Spills And The Future Of The Lower Snake River Dams, 2019 University of Washington School of Law
The Fight Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Spills And The Future Of The Lower Snake River Dams, Michael C. Blumm, Doug Deroy
Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy
One of the nation’s most longstanding environmental-energy conflicts concerns the plight of numerous Columbia Basin salmon species which must navigate the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS), a series of hydroelectric dams that make the basin one of the most highly developed in the world. Although the FCRPS dams produce a wealth of hydropower, the mortalities they cause due to the construction and operation of FCRPS dams led to Endangered Species Act listings for the basin’s salmon. Since those listings a quarter-century ago, the federal government has repeatedly failed to produce biological opinions that can survive judicial scrutiny. The latest …
Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, 2019 Chapman University School of Law
Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan
Texas A&M Law Review
The administrative state has emerged as a pervasive machine that has become the dominate generator of legal rules—despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution commits the legislative power to Congress alone. When examining legislation authorizing administrative agencies to promulgate rules, we are often left asking whether Congress “dele- gates” away its lawmaking authority by giving agencies too much power and discretion to decide what rules should be promulgated and to determine how rich to make their content. If the agencies get broad authority, it is not too hard to understand why they would fulsomely embrace the grant to its fullest. …
Managing Hurricane (And Other Natural Disaster) Risk, 2019 University of Missouri School of Law
Managing Hurricane (And Other Natural Disaster) Risk, Robert Jerry Ii
Texas A&M Law Review
With the data showing that hurricanes are the most likely and serious of all of these disasters, we return to Hurricane Harvey. No one living in Texas—especially in the cities of Houston, Port Arthur, Bridge City, Rockport, Wharton, Conroe, Port Aransas, and Victoria, or more generally in the counties of Harris, Aransas, Nueces, Jefferson, Orange, Victoria, Calhoun, Matagorda, Brazoria, Galveston, Fort Bend, Montgomery, and Wharton—needs to be told that the U.S. needs a better approach to managing hurricane and other natural disaster risk, both in terms of pre-disaster planning and post-disaster recovery. Texans are not alone, as survivors of Hurricanes …
The Time Has Come For A Universal Water Tribunal, 2019 Sagesse University, Beirut, Lebanon
The Time Has Come For A Universal Water Tribunal, Tarek Majzoub, Fabienne Quilleré-Majzoub
Pace Environmental Law Review
Since its inception in 1981, the International Water Tribunal has emerged as a non-governmental body with a multidisciplinary composition and a mandate based on conventional and customary international water law, which holds public hearings in order to address water-related complaints. This Article describes the historical background of the proposed Universal Water Tribunal (“UWT”) and significant difficulties on the horizon facing the proposed Tribunal (including political, practical, and legal-technical considerations). It then summarizes the key factors of such Tribunal and, finally, touches upon the proposed model based on an expanded concept of jurisdiction. The main underlying thesis is that, whereas the …
State Public Nuisance Claims And Climate Change Adaptation, 2019 University of California, Davis, School of Law
State Public Nuisance Claims And Climate Change Adaptation, Albert C. Lin, Michael Burger
Pace Environmental Law Review
This Article explores the potential for state public nuisance claims to facilitate adaptation, resource protection, and other climate change responses by coastal communities in California. The California public nuisance actions represent just the latest chapter in efforts to spur responses to climate change and attribute responsibility for climate change through the common law. Part II of this Article describes the California public nuisance lawsuits and situates them in the context of common law actions directed against climate change. Part III considers the preliminary defenses that defendants have raised and could raise in the California public nuisance lawsuits, including the existence …
Cleaning Up Our Toxic Coasts: A Precautionary And Human Health-Based Approach To Coastal Adaptation, 2019 S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah
Cleaning Up Our Toxic Coasts: A Precautionary And Human Health-Based Approach To Coastal Adaptation, Robin Kundis Craig
Pace Environmental Law Review
Hurricanes in the United States in 2005, 2012, and 2017 have all revealed an insidious problem for coastal climate change adaptation: toxic contamination in the coastal zone. As sea levels rise and violent coastal storms become increasingly frequent, this legacy of toxic pollution threatens immediate emergency response, longer term human health, and coastal ecosystems’ capacity to adapt to changing coastal conditions.
Focusing on Hurricane Harvey’s 2017 devastation of Houston, Texas, as its primary example, this Article first discusses the toxic legacy still present in many coastal environments. It then examines the existing laws available to clean up the coastal zone—CERCLA, …
Table Of Contents, 2019 Seattle University School of Law
Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review
Seattle University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Red Mining: Mining And The Right To Water In Porgera, Papua New Guinea, 2019 Columbia Law School
Red Mining: Mining And The Right To Water In Porgera, Papua New Guinea, Human Rights Clinic, Advanced Consortium On Cooperation, Conflict And Complexity (Ac4)
Human Rights Institute
The Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been one of the world’s highest producing gold mines over the course of its quarter-century history, and has accounted for a considerable percentage of PNG’s economic income. Yet many Porgeran residents live in deplorable conditions and feel trapped by the mine. Where they once farmed vegetables and collected fresh water from natural streams, they now see ever-expanding waste dumps. For years, security guards at the mine physically abused many residents, including sexually assaulting and gang-raping Porgeran women. 3 Residents feel the earth shake with …
Wildearth Guardians V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, 2019 University of Montana School of Law
Wildearth Guardians V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, Seth Sivinski
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. BLM, the District Court of Colorado showed that economic and developmental uncertainty is an area where agencies are given broad discretion in deciding whether an impact is reasonably foreseeable and requires a further conformity analysis under the Clean Air Act. This case exemplifies the tactical limitation of using climate change and the science around it to force greater analysis of projects undertaken by federal agencies. However, the court presented a potential roadmap for successful future challenges.
Solenex Llc V. Jewell, 2019 Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana
Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains
Public Land & Resources Law Review
In Solenex LLC v. Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior cancelled a highly contentious oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, an environmentally sensitive and culturally significant area to the Blackfeet Tribe, nearly thirty years after the lease had been issued. Solenex, a Louisiana based oil and gas company and holder of the lease, brought this action to enjoin the cancellation. The District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with Solenex and found that the Secretary’s decision took an unreasonable amount of time and violated good-faith contractual obligations. On these grounds, the court found the Secretary’s …
Sierra Club V. Virginia Electric & Power Company, 2019 Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana
Sierra Club V. Virginia Electric & Power Company, Thomas C. Mooney-Myers
Public Land & Resources Law Review
The Sierra Club alleged Dominion violated the Clean Water Act by allowing arsenic to leak from coal ash storage pits into state waters. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found for the polluter, using a narrow definition of point source. Additionally, the Fourth Circuit deferred to agency interpretation of the polluter’s permit to find no violation occurred.
Can A State's Water Rights Be Damned? Environmental Flows And Federal Dams In The Supreme Court, 2019 University of New Mexico - School of Law
Can A State's Water Rights Be Damned? Environmental Flows And Federal Dams In The Supreme Court, Reed D. Benson
Faculty Scholarship
Interstate rivers are subject to the doctrine of equitable apportionment, whereby the Supreme Court seeks to ensure that all states that share such rivers get a fair portion of their benefits. The Court has rarely issued an equitable apportionment decree, however, and there is little law on whether the doctrine protects river flows for environmental purposes. The ongoing Florida v. Georgia litigation in the Supreme Court raises this issue, as Florida seeks to limit consumptive uses by upstream Georgia to preserve flows in the Apalachicola River, which provide both economic and environmental benefits. This Article summarizes both the equitable apportionment …
The Rock: The Role Water Plays In Our Lives, 2019 Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
The Rock: The Role Water Plays In Our Lives, Ronald Griffin
Faculty Books and Book Contributions
We witness increasing interconnectedness of issues, internationalization of flows of goods and movement of labor, intergovernmental cooperation, new attitudes to personal rights and meaning of family, including human rights, as well as changes of values, moral principles and ethical conceptions.We live in a pervious world. Traditional boundaries have become permeable. One of the great challenges of our time is the response of the law to current developments. The authors of the collection of essays offered in this book seek to analyze some of these challenges.The essays are revised versions based on presentations at the International Conferences on Law organized by …
Calming Troubled Waters: Local Solutions, Part I, 2019 Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
Calming Troubled Waters: Local Solutions, Part I, John R. Nolon
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In 1861, the Ohio Supreme Court adopted the Absolute Use Rule to govern groundwater, essentially allowing landowners its unencumbered use. The opinion noted that the behavior of subterranean water was “occult and mysterious” and that it was beyond the competence of judges to determine its appropriate use. The Ohio court reversed course in 1984 and adopted the Reasonable Use Rule. By then, scientific knowledge had advanced to the point that the interconnected movement of water was more readily discoverable. The court noted that a primary goal of water law should be to conform to hydrologic fact. This Article explores the …
Waters Of The State, 2019 Wayne State University
Waters Of The State, Noah D. Hall, Joseph Regalia
Law Faculty Research Publications
No abstract provided.
A New Water Law Vista: Rooting The Public Trust Doctrine In The Courts, 2019 University of Nevada, Las Vegas
A New Water Law Vista: Rooting The Public Trust Doctrine In The Courts, Joseph Regalia
Kentucky Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Applying New International Principles Of Transboundary Water Allocation To Florida V. Georgia's Doctrine Of Equitable Apportionment, 2019 Vanderbilt University Law School
Applying New International Principles Of Transboundary Water Allocation To Florida V. Georgia's Doctrine Of Equitable Apportionment, Elizabeth Holden
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
Human conflicts over access to water often focalize around transboundary waterbodies. For example, in the United States, the "tri-state water wars" between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are fights over the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. These tri-state water wars demonstrate water's economic and ecological value. Moreover, these conflicts are likely to escalate as the impacts of climate change decrease freshwater supplies globally.
Both in the United States and internationally, states traditionally address these conflicts through common law principles, such as the doctrine of equitable apportionment. The Supreme Court applied the doctrine most recently in Florida v. Georgia, reiterating the doctrine's flexibility without …
Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, 2019 Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana
Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister
Public Land & Resources Law Review
President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects of scientific interest, and dismissing …
Letter To The Reader, 2019 University of Montana