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Dam Breaching In The Pacific Northwest: Lessons For The Nation, Michael Blumm
Dam Breaching In The Pacific Northwest: Lessons For The Nation, Michael Blumm
Michael Blumm
Over the past dozen years, a number of large dams in the Pacific Northwest have been removed in an effort to restore riverine ecosystems and dependent species like salmon. These dam removals provide perhaps the best example of large-scale environmental remediation in the 21st century. This restoration, however, has occurred on a case-by-case basis, without a comprehensive plan. Yet the result has been to put into motion ongoing rehabilitation efforts in four distinct river basins: the Elwah and White Salmon in Washington and the Sandy and Rogue in Oregon. In all, nine significant dams have been removed, and four more—in …
Pluralism And The Environment Revisted: The Role Of Comment Agencies In Nepa Litigation, Michael Blumm
Pluralism And The Environment Revisted: The Role Of Comment Agencies In Nepa Litigation, Michael Blumm
Michael Blumm
The National Environmental Policy Act suffers from a declining reputation due to high expectations and misunderstood implementation. The U.S. Supreme Court has disappointed environmental advocates by repeatedly ruling that NEPA does not impose substantive obligations to protect the environment that are judicially enforceable. As a result, some critics have characterized NEPA as a mere paperwork statute, imposing only bureaucratic red tape. Nevertheless, some courts have read NEPA to require close judicial scrutiny of federal agency actions with significant environmental consequences and have enjoined agency proposals that do not publicly disclose those consequences. The problem is that the level of judicial …
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
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 …