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SelectedWorks

2012

Natural Resources Law

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Vietnam And The United States: Mining Pollution And The Tragedy Of The Commons, Heather Whitney Oct 2012

Vietnam And The United States: Mining Pollution And The Tragedy Of The Commons, Heather Whitney

Heather Whitney

This paper will discuss Vietnam’s mining pollution problem, and its efforts to foster clean water create and an environmental protection framework within its Constitution, environmental laws and regulations. This paper will also juxtapose these issues with the United States’ regulatory mechanisms for mining and water quality protection, which in comparison are complex and well-rounded, but nonetheless still have regulatory and enforcement loopholes that prevent proper water quality protection. In Vietnam, like most developing countries, regulations and policy statements place socioeconomic growth above water quality protection that frustrates these efforts. Environmental and water quality laws and regulations in Vietnam have not …


The Role Of The Judge In Endangered Species Act Litigation: District Judge James Redden And The Columbia Basin Salmon Saga, Michael C. Blumm, Aurora Paulsen Jan 2012

The Role Of The Judge In Endangered Species Act Litigation: District Judge James Redden And The Columbia Basin Salmon Saga, Michael C. Blumm, Aurora Paulsen

Michael Blumm

After rejecting three federal biological opinions (BiOps) for favoring federal Columbia Basin hydroelectric operations over salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Judge James A. Redden has retired, passing oversight of the litigation to a new federal judge. This complex case, which concerns the accommodations the world’s largest hydropower system must give to the region’s signature natural resource, has now spanned nearly twenty years and five different BiOps. For his part, Judge Redden worked closely with the parties in an attempt to arrive at improvements in salmon survival. In this managerial role, he acted perhaps as the archetypical federal …


Postjudgment “Water Interest”: Lifting The Headgate To Let Appropriate Compensation Flow For Unlawful Diversions, Jeffrey T. Matson Jan 2012

Postjudgment “Water Interest”: Lifting The Headgate To Let Appropriate Compensation Flow For Unlawful Diversions, Jeffrey T. Matson

Jeffrey T Matson

Irrigators overdraw many Western streams to the detriment of tribal and environmental uses; these conflicting interests regularly battle in state and federal court over water allocation. This article profiles United States v. Bell (Bell) —the latest such skirmish among warring parties in the Truckee and Carson River basins of northern Nevada. In Bell, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit faced persistent excessive irrigation diversions by the Truckee Carson Irrigation District (TCID) in violation of applicable federal court decrees, administrative Operating Criteria and Procedures (OCAPs), and the Congressional Settlement Act of 1990. The Court discussed an unprecedented …