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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Law
Billionaires, Birds, And Environmental Brawls: Reconceptualizing Energy Easements, Nadia B. Ahmad
Billionaires, Birds, And Environmental Brawls: Reconceptualizing Energy Easements, Nadia B. Ahmad
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Billionaires, Birds, And Environmental Brawls: Reconceptualizing Energy Easements, Nadia B. Ahmad
Billionaires, Birds, And Environmental Brawls: Reconceptualizing Energy Easements, Nadia B. Ahmad
Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment
In the substantial power outages associated with Hurricane Sandy and the 2013 Oklahoma tornadoes and Colorado floods, which left millions without power, the United States witnessed the insufficiency of its existing energy infrastructure. The lack of access to reliable energy widens the cleavage between the rich and poor, particularly in times of disaster and crisis. Policymakers and government regulators involved with long distance energy transmission projects have not adequately instituted laws and policies for existing and future energy access. This Article holds that current regulations, practices, and norms for long distance energy transmission may be doomed because of complications with …
Fracking Preemption Litigation, James K. Pickle
Fracking Preemption Litigation, James K. Pickle
Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment
Fracking is not a new technology, but it only recently came to the forefront of energy industry news. Fracking’s recent fame has been both positive and negative. Fracking proponents have lauded the economic and environmental benefits of the process. They cite the process’ ability to extract formerly inaccessible oil and natural gas, which reduces the U.S.’s demand for foreign oil and natural gas and reduces the use of coal. In contrast, fracking opponents state fracking damages the environment by diluting drinking water with harmful chemicals, generating emissions, and creating general nuisances for communities. They believe fracking’s harmful impacts clearly outweigh …
Dynamic Forest Federalism, Blake Hudson
Dynamic Forest Federalism, Blake Hudson
Washington and Lee Law Review
State and local governments have long maintained regulatory authority to manage natural resources, and most subnational governments have politically exercised that authority to some degree. Policy makers, however, have increasingly recognized that the dynamic attributes of natural resources make them difficult to manage on any one scale of government. As a result, the nation has shifted toward multilevel governance known as “dynamic federalism” for many if not most regulatory subject areas, especially in the context of the natural environment. The nation has done so both legally and politically—the constitutional validity of expanded federal regulatory authority over resources has consistently been …
Unringing The Bell: Time For Epa To Reconsider Its Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, David Yaussy, Elizabeth Turgeon
Unringing The Bell: Time For Epa To Reconsider Its Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, David Yaussy, Elizabeth Turgeon
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
Falling Behind: Processing And Enforcing Permits For Animal Agriculture Operations In Maryland Is Lagging, Rena I. Steinzor, Anne Havemann
Falling Behind: Processing And Enforcing Permits For Animal Agriculture Operations In Maryland Is Lagging, Rena I. Steinzor, Anne Havemann
Rena I. Steinzor
After decades of failed interstate agreements, the Chesapeake Bay is choking on too many nutrients. The estuary’s last, best chance of recovery is the Environmental Protection Agency's Total Maximum Daily Load (“TMDL”) program, also known as a pollution diet. To meet this deadline, all polluters, including large animal farms, will need to sharply reduce the pollutants they release into the Bay. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) must ensure that each Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (“CAFO”) has developed a facility-specific permit that details when and where manure is applied to fields and how waste is stored and handled. Then …
Frostpaw Addresses Global Warming, William Snape
Frostpaw Addresses Global Warming, William Snape
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
INTRODUCTION: Climate change impacts the law on many levels and in many ways. This Article asks a threshold question: what legal structures will most effectively reduce growing levels of anthropogenic greenhouse pollution? The answer is that an existing U.S. statute-the Clean Air Act-not only possesses clear commands to ratchet down greenhouse pollutants domestically, but also provides explicit authority to negotiate concomitant air pollution reduction with countries around the planet in a fair, transparent, and reciprocal fashion. Further, application of the Clean Air Act is consistent with other legal and policy tools to address global warming. This statute-based solution, while facially …
The Underappreciated Role Of The National Environmental Policy Act In Wilderness Designation And Management, Michael Blumm, Lorena Wisehart
The Underappreciated Role Of The National Environmental Policy Act In Wilderness Designation And Management, Michael Blumm, Lorena Wisehart
Faculty Articles
On its 50th anniversary, the Wilderness Act owes much to the effect of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), both in terms of the number of acres in the national wilderness system and in the management of designated wilderness areas. Courts have closely scrutinized federal land management agency actions that threaten wilderness qualities — and this article maintains that the usual vehicle has been NEPA. Enacted a little over a half-decade after the Wilderness Act, NEPA was instrumental in the doubling of wilderness acres in the 1980s, as Congress added wilderness areas and released other areas to multiple uses in …
Endogenous Decentralization In Federal Environmental Policies, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman, Leah G. Traub
Endogenous Decentralization In Federal Environmental Policies, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman, Leah G. Traub
All Faculty Scholarship
Under most federal environmental laws and some health and safety laws, states may apply for “primacy,” that is, authority to implement and enforce federal law, through a process known as “authorization.” Some observers fear that states use authorization to adopt more lax policies in a regulatory “race to the bottom.” This paper presents a simple model of the interaction between the federal and state governments in such a scheme of partial decentralization. Our model suggests that the authorization option may not only increase social welfare but also allow more stringent environmental regulations than would otherwise be feasible. Our model also …