Digital Commons Network^™

Brownfield Legislation: A Viable Option For The Southeast, Leslie Goff-Sanders

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Illegal Discharge: Exploring The History Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The U.S. Clean Water Act, Dr. Joshua Ozymy, Dr. Melisssa L. Jarrell

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The criminal prosecution of defendants that violate federal clean water laws has been ongoing for roughly four decades. Yet, we continue to have a poor understanding of how federal prosecutors use the U.S. Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to charge and prosecute criminals and the outcomes of those prosecutions. We use content analysis to analyze 2,588 federal criminal prosecution case summaries, 1983-2019, to gain a better historical understanding of how the CWA has been used as a prosecutorial tool, to bring out the major themes in the prosecutions, and quantify sentencing outcomes. Findings from the 828 CWA prosecutions undertaken during this …

Environmental Law As Segregation, Nadia B. Ahmad, Melissa Bryan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Making America A Better Place For All: Sustainable Development Recommendations For The Biden Administration, William Snape, Tony Pipa, Audra Wilson, John Bouman, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, Corey Malone-Smolla, Alexandra Phelan, Mark Dorosin, Karol Boudreaux, Robert Adler, Uma Outka, Elizabeth Kronk Warner, Stephen Herzenberg, Samuel Markolf, Mikhail Chester, Gerlad Torres, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Leroy Paddock, Michael B. Gerrard, Anastasia M. Telesetsky, Kimberly Brown, Jane Nelson, John C. Dernbach, Scott E, Schang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In 2015, the United Nations Member States, including the United States, unanimously approved 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are nonbinding; each nation is to implement them based on its own priorities and circumstances. This Article argues that the SDGs are a critical normative framework the United States should use to improve human quality of life, freedom, and opportunity by integrating economic and social development with environmental protection. It collects the recommendations of 22 experts on steps that the Biden-Harris Administration should take now to advance each of the SDGs. It is part of …

Siting Wind Energy Projects In Virginia: Recommendations For Addressing National Security Concerns Through State Permitting Processes, Erika Bosack, Dana Mirsky, Anna Nicholson, Christopher Sanborn

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This white paper first explains the federal and state wind energy siting approval processes and the military’s current involvement in those processes. In particular, the paper focuses on permit-issuing agencies as opposed to policy-making agencies. Parts I and II outline the federal and state permitting process, respectively. In Part III, the paper discusses the military’s concerns regarding wind energy siting. Part IV moves to the current status of Virginia’s onshore and offshore wind industries. Part V analyzes two case studies: Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island and the Pantego Wind Energy Facility in North Carolina. Finally, Part VI synthesizes …

The Recent Federal Withdrawal Of Limitations On Supplemental Environmental Projects And Importance To Environmental Justice Initiatives, Christina Giordanella

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note discusses the significance of Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) in advancing environmental justice, particularly benefiting low-income and minority communities. It highlights the Biden administration's reversal of Trump-era restrictions on SEPs, which previously limited their use. The article argues that SEPs are legally valid tools supported by Congress through various environmental statutes and court rulings, despite challenges from the Trump administration. It emphasizes the need for explicit Congressional authorization to secure the future of SEPs and expand their use in settlements.

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Community-Engaged Research Surrounding Lead In Drinking Water In The Mississippi Delta, Kristine L. Willett, Stephanie E. Showalter, Catherine M. Janasie, Josephine P. Rhymes, Kennedy Dickson, John J. Green

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

Childhood lead poisoning is a problem requiring interdisciplinary attention from toxicology, public health, social sciences, environmental law, and policy. In the U.S., Mississippi was ranked as one of the worst states for lead poisoning with limited childhood screening measures. We conducted community-engaged research by working with leaders in the largely rural Mississippi Delta region from 2016-2019 to collect household water samples and questionnaires and involve their communities in lead poisoning risk awareness and outreach. Drinking water from 213 homes was collected and analyzed for pH and lead concentrations. Highest lead concentrations were from households served by private wells, and detectable …

Cercla Reauthorization 1994: Insuring The Cleanup Of Hazardous Substance Pollution, Katherine Taylor Eubank

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Sara's Offspring: Some First Principles For Superfund Reform In The 1990s, Robert F. Blomquist

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice, Settler Colonialism, And More-Than-Humans In The Occupied West Bank: An Introduction, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in …

Indigenous Environmental Justice And Sustainability, Deborah Mcgregor

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter offers an alternative vision for sustainable futures involving self-determined Indigenous environmental justice (EJ). It builds upon a distinct understanding of Indigenous EJ which asserts that the components necessary for Indigenous EJ are Indigenous knowledge systems, legal orders, and conceptions of justice that have existed for thousands of years.1 This contribution will also offer preliminary thoughts on the need to decolonize internationally adopted conceptions of sustainable development expressed more recently through the post-2015 United Nations sustainable development agenda. Indigenous environmental injustice is very much an outcome of “unsustainable” and detrimental “development,” as well as gross violations of human and …

Law Library Blog (March 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Special State Standing Is Environmental: Clarifying Massachusetts V. Epa, Dorothea Allocca

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

When the Court granted states “special solicitude in [its] standing analysis” in Massachusetts v. EPA, it left lower courts with more questions than answers. While legal scholars continue to debate these questions thirteen years later, the practical impacts of Massachusetts v. EPA are coming into focus. Today states are suing the federal government, often in multistate coalitions, to enforce or challenge federal administrative policies. This intergovernmental, public-law litigation increased dramatically during the Obama administration and has further skyrocketed since January 2017. States do not exclusively rely upon special state solicitude in suing the federal government. However, this lowered procedural bar …

Cancer Alley And The Fight Against Environmental Racism, Idna G. Castellón

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Humans Long Ignored: Revisiting Nepa's Definition Of "Human Environment" In The Era Of Black Lives Matter, Travis D. Jones

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Building Back Better: Investing In A Resilient Recovery For Washington State, Kevin Tempest, Jonah Kurman-Faber, Ruby Wincele

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

This article analyzes the potential jobs and community health benefits created by a sample Resilient Recovery Portfolio of investments in Washington State. This type of investment mindset can kick-start job growth, shared economic prosperity, cleaner air, and climate-resilient communities, thereby serving as a template for Building Back Better in Washington and elsewhere. A Resilient Recovery Portfolio supports over ten jobs per million dollars invested in clean transportation, forest conservation and ecosystem restoration, clean energy, water and energy efficiency, low carbon agriculture, and sustainable industry programs. By comparison, the state’s ten largest industries support 4.3 jobs per million dollars invested. This …

Environmental Justice And Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment: Applying The Duty Of Impartiality To Discriminatory Siting, Jacob Elkin

Panel II: Reshaping EJ Law & Social Policy

Since the 1970s, there has been a growing awareness that environmental hazards are disproportionately sited in low-income communities and communities of color. Under the label of the environmental justice movement, community groups have pursued various means to fight against the discriminatory concentration of environmental burdens in their neighborhoods. Yet in its Civil Rights Act and Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has largely shut the door on federal environmental justice litigation by requiring plaintiffs to prove that the government acted with discriminatory intent in its siting and permitting decisions.

This Note argues that Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment provides an …

Environmental Enforceability, Seema Kakade

Faculty Scholarship

There are great expectations for a resurgence in federal environmental enforcement in a Biden-led federal government. Indeed, federal environmental enforcement suffered serious blows during the Trump Administration, particularly at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including large cuts in the budget for enforcement and reversals of key enforcement policies. Yet, while important to repair the damage, truly strengthening federal environmental enforcement will require more. This Article highlights the need for greater attention to the multiple hurdles that plague environmental enforcement. In doing so it makes three contributions to the literature. First, it asserts that even though environmental statutes, regulations, and guidance …

Protecting Cultural Heritage By Recourse To International Environmental Law: Chinese Stances On Faultless State Liability, Riccardo Vecellio Segate

UC Law Environmental Journal

Several international policy documents define the environment as made of “natural heritage” and “cultural heritage” together, along the lines of concepts such as “biosphere” or “ecosystem” which have been introduced relatively recently to define the complexity of humanenvironment interactions. Nevertheless, distinguishing natural heritage from the cultural one helps analyse situations where damage inflicted to the former negatively impacts the latter. In fact, cultural heritage sits under siege worldwide due to polluting activities and environmental degradation, which are causing irreparable damage to—or even the disappearance of— valuable expressions of civilisations’ legacy. Most damages are transboundary, thereby calling into question bilateral forms …

The Glass Is Half Full But Contaminated: An Analysis Of The United States’ Financial Investment In The Drinking Water Infrastructure System, Maya Marshall

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

“Forgotten” By The Clean Water Act: The Anacostia River’S Evolving Environmental Justice Problems, Madeleine Dwyer

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Strategies And Techniques For Teaching Environmental Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Books

Teaching law students is an enormous privilege and an immense responsibility. Teaching Environmental Law, in particular, gives the professor an opportunity to help future lawyers understand some important lessons. First, contrary to the belief of many first-year law students, the legal system is not made up entirely of courts. It’s not all judicial and it’s not all adversarial. The statutes Congress creates need implementation and that’s the role of agencies. Lawyers can do a world of good by working in and around legislatures and agencies and with the people who staff them. Environmental lawyers can help shape legislation, the resulting …

Carbon Taxes And Economic Inequality, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Measuring Environmental Justice: Analysis Of Progress Under Presidents Bush, Obama, And Trump, Mollie Soloway

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Beyond Emissions: Migration, Prisons, And The Green New Deal, Wyatt Sassman, Danielle C. Jefferis

Faculty Scholarship

The Green New Deal is a bold resolution that asks us to envision climate policy beyond emissions reductions and pollution controls. The proposal seeks to reduce environmental impacts, including by dramatically reducing carbon emissions, while supporting domestic manufacturing, unionized labor, sustainable agriculture, and social equity. The Biden Administration has expressed support for the Green New Deal as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and the proposal has influenced the Administration’s early actions to reduce carbon emissions. How can the Green New Deal’s framework guide climate policy beyond emissions reductions, and who should be a part of …

The Law Of Enhanced Weathering For Carbon Dioxide Removal: Volume 2 – Legal Issues Associated With Materials Sourcing, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures well below 2°C, and ideally to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels will likely require the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This could be achieved in various ways, including by enhancing natural weathering processes in which carbon dioxide reacts with silicate-based rocks, eventually forming carbonate minerals (e.g., limestone). Research suggests that the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered through this natural process can be increased by grinding silicate-rich minerals (e.g., olivine) or rocks (e.g., dunite) to increase their surface area and then spreading the powder over land or …

The Climate Leadership And Community Protection Act’S Environmental Justice Promise, Hillary Aidun, Julia Li, Antonia Pereira

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In 2019, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“CLCPA”) into law. The CLCPA was passed with the objective of addressing climate change and minimizing the adverse impacts on the “economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of New York.” S. 6599, 2019-2020 Sen., Reg. Sess. § 1 (N.Y. 2019). The CLCPA seeks to meet these objectives by reducing statewide greenhouse gas emissions, scaling up renewable energy to avoid further climate change, and improving the resiliency of the state in order to address unavoidable climate change impacts. Id. The law created …

Maybe Coal Shouldn’T Keep The Lights On: An Analysis Of Climate Change In Kentucky And Potential Legislation That Could Mitigate Its Effects, Shelby Lamar

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Energy Without Injustice?: Indigenous Participation In Renewable Energy Generation, Adrian A. Smith, Dayna Nadine Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

There is growing involvement of Indigenous communities in renewable energy development across their traditional territories in what is now called Canada. Here, we explore Indigenous participation in large-scale “green” energy generation as a response to encroachment, displacement, and dispossession wrought by the extractivist orientation of contemporary settler capitalism.

Intersections Of Environmental Justice And Sustainable Development: Framing The Issues, Sumudu A. Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter proceeds as follows. Section 1.2 describes the evolution of the concept of sustainable development from the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It discusses contem- porary degrowth and green growth movements, before introducing the relatively novel concept of just sustainabilities, a synthesis of environmental justice and sustainable development. Section 1.3 de!nes environmental justice and discusses its relationship to human rights and the social pillar of sustainable development, reflecting on which dimensions of environmental justice are well reflected in this book and which proved more dif!cult to address. …