Law Commons^™

Delegated Agency Authority To Address Chemicals Of Emerging Concern: Epa’S Strategic Use Of Emergency Powers To Address Pfas Air Pollution, Robert L. Glicksman, Johanna Adashek

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

PFAS are a class of chemicals that pose some of the most serious and multifaceted health and environmental threats of the past century. Manufactured since the 1940s, used in everyday products from non-stick cookware, to fire-fighting foams, to makeup and shaving cream, and found in even the most remote parts of the world, PFAS are ubiquitous. The most thoroughly-studied PFAS have demonstrable serious health effects that include reproductive and developmental dysfunctions, interference with the body’s hormonal and immune systems, suppression of vaccine responsiveness, and links to various types of cancers. In response to scientists’ identification of the multitude of health …

Preventing Emissions From Slipping Through The Cracks: How Collaboration On New Technologies To Detect Violations And Minimize Emissions Can Efficiently Enforce Existing Clean Air Act Regulations, Kathryn Caballero

Journal Articles

The link between air pollution and poor public health is well known and has been farther documented during the COVID-19 pandemic, 1 but EPA has outdated methods and rules to detect air emissions. Enforcing existing environmental regulations presents challenges because the detection and monitoring technologies identified in the regulations, or the regulation language itself, may not sufficiently identify environmental pollution, let alone complex environmental fraud. How can EPA best use new technologies and concepts to detect violations, with the intent of minimizing emissions, to improve human health and environmental outcomes during the lengthy process of drafting and publishing new regulations? …

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 …

Using New York Law To Advance Equity In The Transportation & Climate Initiative Program, Hillary Aidun, Ama Francis, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Reducing pollution from the transportation sector is one of the most important steps to sustaining a livable climate. The transportation sector is the leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in both the United States and New York. Cars, trucks and buses also emit other harmful air pollutants that more immediately contribute to public health threats such as asthma, heart disease, and premature death.

How Biden’S Environmental Policies Will Affect New York, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

As this column has previously discussed, President Joe Biden’s environmental policies are a sharp reversal of those of former President Donald Trump. Today’s column spotlights how this change will affect New York state and New York City.

Whither The Regulatory "War On Coal"? Scapegoats, Saviors, And Stock Market Reactions, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

Complaints about excessive economic burdens associated with regulation abound in contemporary political and legal rhetoric. In recent years, perhaps nowhere have these complaints been heard as loudly as in the context of U.S. regulations targeting the use of coal to supply power to the nation’s electricity system, as production levels in the coal industry dropped by nearly half between 2008 and 2016. The coal industry and its political supporters, including the president of the United States, have argued that a suite of air pollution regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration seriously undermined coal companies’ …

California’S Fight For Clean Air, Laura Tracey

Environmental Law Journal blog

Visible air pollution, known colloquially as “smog,” is responsible for clouding the horizons of cities all over the world. Smog forms when nitrous oxides react with sunlight, creating airborne particles which contribute to global warming and harm the health of humans, animals, and plant life. Car exhaust is one of the biggest contributors of nitrous oxide, and specific geographic and climate patterns can exacerbate the effects of the resulting smog. With approximately 14.5 million registered vehicles in the state and a climate perfect for harboring air pollution, most Californians have seen the telltale hazy skyline at some point in their …

The Law Of Enhanced Weathering For Carbon Dioxide Removal, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Despite scientists’ dire warnings about the catastrophic impacts of climate change, the greenhouse gases that cause it continue to be emitted in substantial amounts. While there is no question that deep, across the board cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are essential, many scientists now agree that simply cutting future emissions will not be enough. It will also be necessary to remove previously-emitted greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This paper explores one greenhouse gas removal technique – enhanced weathering – which involves spreading finely ground silicate rocks or other materials with similar chemical composition over land or ocean waters. The materials …

Whither The Regulatory “War On Coal”? Scapegoats, Saviors, And Stock Market Reactions, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

Complaints about excessive economic burdens associated with regulation abound in contemporary political and legal rhetoric. In recent years, perhaps nowhere have these complaints been heard as loudly as in the context of U.S. regulations targeting the use of coal to supply power to the nation’s electricity system, as production levels in the coal industry dropped by nearly half between 2008 and 2016. The coal industry and its political supporters, including the president of the United States, have argued that a suite of air pollution regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration seriously undermined coal companies’ …

Direct Air Capture: An Emerging Necessity To Fight Climate Change, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The Paris Agreement of 2015 declared that we must keep global average temperatures well below 2.0°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels, and as close to 1.5°C as possible. However, a 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed that even 2.0°C would be catastrophic; 1.5°C should be the firm goal. We are now around 1.0°C and are already seeing wildfires, hurricanes, inland precipitation, and other events of unprecedented magnitude.

Environmental Racism In St. Louis, Thomas Harvey, John Mcannar, Michael-John Voss, Dutchtown South Community Corporation, Action St. Louis, Sierra Club

All Faculty Scholarship

This report calls out environmental racism-"the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color"1-in St. Louis. While these disparities have been part of the long-standing discriminatory and profit-driven policies and practices known too well by black St. Louisans, the issue of environmental racism has rarely been addressed in the City.

At least three recent reports- For the Sake of All,2 Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide,3 and Equity lndicators4-document the heavy health, economic, and quality of life burdens that the St. Louis region imposes on its black residents. This report complements those by focusing on the burdens related …

Visibility Protection Under The Clean Air Act, Arnold W. Reitze Jr.

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Clean Air Act’s (CAAs) visibility protection program was created in 1977 and expanded in 1990. It applies to states with sources of air emissions that impact 156 Federal Class I areas, which include national parks and wilderness areas. Such states are required to develop haze implementation plans (SIPs) to control emissions in order to restore natural visibility in Class I areas. Initially, large stationary sources that began operating between 1962 and 1977 were to install the Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) based on regulations issued by EPA. This process resulted in complex rules, litigation, and political maneuvering. Subsequently, the …

New York’S New Congestion Pricing Law, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

In the biggest change in local transportation policy in a generation, maybe two, “congestion pricing” will be instituted in Manhattan’s Central Business District in early 2021. It is the first action in decades that could actually lower traffic congestion, and that could provide a stable funding base for the capital program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It also transfers considerable power from the Mayor to the Governor.

Breathing Air With Heft: An Experiential Report On Environmental Law And Public Health In China, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

This article explores the gritty intersections of daily life and environmental law in modern China, an industrial powerhouse still struggling to reconcile economic opportunity with breathable air, clean water, healthy food, and safe products. With comparative perspective on analogous challenges in the United States, the article reports on these critical domestic challenges for China at a pivotal moment in its reemergence as a dominant world power. China’s continued geopolitical rise may well hinge on its ability to respond successfully to the environmental causes of growing social unrest. In 2011, in the midst of this maelstrom, I brought my husband, young …

Concrete Manufacturers And The Regulatory Role Of The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Golden Gate University School Of Law

Environmental Law and Justice Clinic

This report discusses the results of an investigation into concrete manufacturers in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) handling of the concrete plants’ air pollution violations and the agency’s failure to follow its own enforcement guidelines.

The investigation focused on three concrete manufacturers operating in the City of San Francisco and around the Bay Area because they generate harmful particulate matter: Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC (Cemex), Central Concrete Supply Co., Inc. (Central), and Hanson Aggregates Mid-Pacific, Inc. (Hanson). Because asthma is prevalent in the Bayview Hunters-Point community, particulate matter pollution is of …

A Domestic Solution For Transboundary Harm: Singapore's Haze Pollution Law, Mahdev Mohan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Toxic ‘haze’ from fires, often burning over dry peatland in Indonesia, has affected millions across Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as parts of the Philippines and Thailand. For Singapore in particular, this slash-and-burn method of clearing land in Indonesia to cultivate crops such as oil palm has been an annual problem since 1972. However, 2015 stands out as the year Singapore experienced one of its worst episodes of haze pollution. Air quality based on the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) plummeted to the ‘very unhealthy’ and ‘hazardous ranges’ for close to 50 days. Singapore suffered an estimated SGD $700 million …

Drilling For Common Ground: How Public Opinion Tracks Experts In The Debate Over Federal Regulation Of Shale Oil & Gas Extraction, Elizabeth Ann Glass Geltman

Publications and Research

Public interest in environmental and health impacts from shale oil and gas extraction (what the public calls “fracking”) is growing. Industry claims the public outcry against the new technology is not grounded in science. In February 2013, Resources for the Future (“RFF”) published a list of high priority “risk pathways” that experts from NGOs, academia, government, and industry all agreed were real concerns about fracking. This article used the risk matrix to evaluate whether public comments in dockets of federal agencies that proposed regulation concerning hydraulic fracturing tracked expert concern. The article found that the public tracked many of the …

Legal Pathways To Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under Section 115 Of The Clean Air Act, Michael Burger, Ann E. Carlson, Michael B. Gerrard, Jayni Foley Hein, Jason A. Schwartz, Keith J. Benes

Faculty Scholarship

Under President Barack Obama the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promulgated a series of greenhouse gas emissions regulations, initiating the necessary national response to climate change. However, the United States will need to find other ways to reduce GHG emissions if it is to live up to its international emissions reduction pledges, and to ultimately lead the way to a zero-carbon energy future. This paper argues that the success of the recent climate negotiations in Paris provides a strong basis for invoking a powerful tool available to help achieve the country’s climate change goals: Section 115 of the Clean Air …

‘We Are The Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality And Environmental Justice, Dayna Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

Residents of pollution hotspots often take on projects in ‘citizen science’, or popularepidemiology, in an effort to marshal the data that can prove their experience of the pollution to the relevant authorities. Sometimes these tactics, such as pollution logs or bucket brigades, take advantage of residents’ spatially ordered and finely honed experiential and sensory knowledge of the places they inhabit. But putting that knowledge into conversation with law requires them to mobilize a new, ‘foreign’ set of tools, primarily oriented to the observation, measurement and sampling of pollution according to conventional scientific standards. Here, I employ qualitative empirical methods in …

Debunking Revisionist Understandings Of Environmental Cooperative Federalism: Collective Action Responses To Air Pollution, Jessica Wentz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The federal Clean Air Act initiated Congress's venture into cooperative environmental federalism in 1970. Forty-five years later, misconceptions about the nature of that venture (and similar examples of cooperative federalism under other federal environmental statutes) persist. In particular, some recent judicial decisions characterize environmental cooperative federalism as an equal partnership between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the states. They also take umbrage at efforts by EPA to override state policies and initiatives that fail to conform to the minimum responsibilities that the statutes impose on the states, characterizing them as unlawful affronts to state sovereignty.

This chapter argues that …

Slides: Public Health Research On Near O&G Development: Challenges And Needs, John L. Adgate

Water and Air Quality Issues in Oil and Gas Development: The Evolving Framework of Regulation and Management (Martz Summer Conference, June 5-6)

Presenter: John L. Adgate, PhD, MSPH, Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Colorado

19 slides

The Paper Tiger Gets Teeth: Developments In Chinese Environmental Law, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

This very short essay reports on the 2014 amendments to China’s Environmental Protection Law, following a series of internationally reported air and water pollution crises leading to unprecedented public protests. The changes promise more meaningful oversight of industrial pollution and harsher penalties for violations, targeting not only polluters but officials who fail to enforce applicable regulations against them. The amendments also empower certain non-governmental organizations to bring environmental litigation on behalf of the public. Official news accounts openly acknowledge the government’s hope that increased public access to legal redress will reduce the growing trend of mass environmental protests. These are …

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 …

The Overwhelming Case For Clean Air Act Reform, Bill Pedersen, David Schoenbrod

Other Publications

Congress could add half year to the life of the average american by eliminating two false assumptions built into the foundation of the CleanAir Act: (1) All pollutants have a safe level (2) pollution is local.

Drafting Model Laws On Indoor Pollution For Developing And Developed Nations Workshop, July 12-13, 2012, Boulder, Colorado: Introduction, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Development And Dissemination Of Clean Cookstoves: A Model Law For Developing Countries, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Slides: Meeting The Needs Of Women Through Clean Cooking Solutions, Corinne Hart

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Corinne Hart, Program Manager, Gender and Markets, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

20 slides

Federal Air Pollution Requirements, Helen Kang

Publications

The Clean Air Act is notoriously difficult to navigate and enforce. The difficulty is in part due to the act's regulatory scheme, which is inferior in critical ways to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act). Unlike the Waste Discharge Requirements covering discharges of pollution into water bodies issued by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which contain both federal and state requirements in a single permit, the Clean Air Act does not require a single permit for all facilities that pollute the air. Also significant, the Clean Air Act does not require self-reporting …

Agenda: Air Quality Impacts From Oil And Gas Development, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Gas Development (January 27)

Oil and gas development and hydraulic fracturing have received enormous attention over the past few years, and most of that attention has focused on the potential impacts of such development on water quality. However, the potential impacts on air quality from oil and gas development have received far less public and media attention and discussion. This two-hour program will assess the current scientific knowledge, regulatory requirements and policies regarding the impacts on air quality from oil and gas development and will address current initiatives at the state and national levels to further regulate and control those impacts.

Environmental Law And Justice Clinic Fall 2011 Report, Eljc

Environmental Law and Justice Clinic

Founded in 1994, the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic serves the dual mission of training law students to be effective and ethical advocates and assisting low-income communities and communities of color to reduce the disparities of pollution. The clinic is staffed by ten to twelve law students, two full-time professors, a part-time staff scientist, and a Graduate Fellow. The State Bar certifies the law students to perform lawyerly tasks under the supervision of their professors.

The clinic’s 2011 work focused primarily on reducing the disparities of air pollution. This Fall 2011 report highlights some of the clinic’s work and accomplishments …