Law Commons^™

Balancing Economic Growth And Air Pollution: Prevention Of Significant Deterioration And The Protection Of Florida's Future, Enola R. Tobi

Florida State University Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law

This Article researches the history of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program of the Clean Air Act, which serves to protect air quality in areas of the nation where the air is cleaner than the national ambient air quality standards. The Article also attempts to align the goals of the PSD program with those of the State of Florida, and proposes a system of administration that would accomplish these goals with the fewest restrictions. Finally, the Article analyzes the present methods adopted by other states, as well as those proposed by economists, industry members and environmentalists.

Remedying Regulatory Diseconomies Of Scale, Hannah J. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

Rules in the modern administrative state tend to lag behind reality, and a key contributor to this stickiness – the volume of regulated activity – is largely ignored. When legislators or agency staff initially write rules to constrain the externalities of an activity, they assume that the activity will occur at a particular scale. Based on the known impacts at this scale, policymakers and regulators balance the harms of the regulated activity against the costs of regulation to industry, striking a compromise within the chosen rule or choosing to not regulate at all.

If the activity later expands from this …

The Real Problem With New Source Review, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Editors’ Summary: When the CAA was amended in 1977, the U.S. Congress imposed pollution control requirements on new stationary sources of air pollution, called new source review (NSR), but exempted existing facilities from such requirements. By creating a more favorable regulatory environment for existing facilities than for new ones, “grandfathering” creates an incentive to keep old facilities up and running. Moreover, as a command-and control program, requiring capital expenditures for pollution control equipment makes the capital sluggishness problem worse. Combined with often confusing EPA policies and a changing political environment, NSR has resulted in a running battle between the regulated …

On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Environmental Law: A Book Review Of Frank Ackerman And Lisa Heinzerling's Priceless: On Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Legal scholarship on the role of cost-benefit analysis in environmental law is often stimulating, but does not seem to be changing anybody's mind. The entrenchment of a camp of detractors and a camp of advocates of cost-benefit analysis parallels the impasse that has stymied environmental law for over a decade. Professors Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling have coauthored a book that captures most of the arguments from the detractor side, and they have done so skillfully and powerfully. However, this Review criticizes the book's contribution to perpetuating this intellectual stalemate. The book does this by focusing on an environmental theory …

Fairness Versus Efficiency In Environmental Law, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Like many other areas of law, the development of environmental law has been strongly influenced by notions of fairness. This should not be surprising, since environmental law has been developed by lawyers, who are self-selected to be fairness-oriented and trained to think in terms of fairness. While large environmental gains have been achieved in the thirtyyear history of environmental law, progress seems to have reached a plateau. Partisanship has poisoned the debate on how best to proceed in making further environmental progress. I attribute the failings and the current stalemate in environmental law to our obsession with fairness. Fairness-thinking has …