Law Commons^™

Treading Water While Congress Ignores The Nation's Environment, Sandra B. Zellmer

Faculty Law Review Articles

During the late 1960s, the nation's attention was riveted on graphic images of contaminated resources, such as smoldering rivers and oil-soaked seagulls,' as well as Rachel Carson's haunting prose about the "strange blight"2 of chemical pesticides afflicting land, water, and wildlife. Policymakers recognized the need for strong legal protections for public health and the environment, and Congress responded with sweeping legislation governing the pollution of water, air, and soil, and the demise of threatened and endangered species.3

The Clean Water Act of 1972 (CWA), which regulates discharges of pollutants into waters of the United States, is one of the most …

Throwing Precaution To The Wind: Nepa And The Deepwater Horizon Blowout, Sandra B. Zellmer, Joel A. Mintz, Robert Glicksman

Faculty Law Review Articles

On April 20, 2010, British Petroleum's ("BP") Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded, killing eleven workers. When the platform sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico two days later, oil erupted out of the riser-a 5000-foot pipe connecting the platform to the well on the ocean floor. 2 Efforts to stem the flow failed when a safety device, the "blowout preventer," could not be activated.' Finally, after a number of attempts to stop the leak, BP capped the well on July 15.4 Nearly five million barrels of oil were released over the course of eighty-six days, making the Deepwater …

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Sandra B. Zellmer, Christine A. Klein

Faculty Law Review Articles

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a "manmade" disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This Article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

Sacrificing Legislative Integrity An The Altar Of Appropriations Riders: A Constitutional Crisis, Sandra B. Zellmer

Faculty Law Review Articles

No abstract provided.