Environmental Law Commons^™

Offshore Windfall: What Approval Of The United States' First Offshore Wind Project Means For The Offshore Wind Energy Industry, Michael P. Giordano

University of Richmond Law Review

This comment explores the Cape Wind project with an emphasis on its role as the first United States offshore wind energy project. Part II of this comment explains the potential energy resource that offshore wind provides and examines some of the economic, technological, and regulatory challenges facing the development of offshore wind projects in United States waters. Part III of this comment introduces the Cape Wind project as a case study by briefly describing the particular political struggles and permitting challenges faced by its developers. Part IV of this comment analyzes how DOI approval and the eventual construction of Cape …

Finding The Proper Forum For Regulation Of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The Legal And Economic Implications Of Massachusetts V. Epa, George F. Allen, Marlo Lewis

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pesticide Risk Indicators: Unidentified Inert Ingredients Compromise Their Integrity And Utility, Michael D. Surgan, Madison Condon, Caroline Cox

Faculty Scholarship

Pesticide Risk Indicators (PRIs) are widely used to evaluate and compare the potential health and environmental risks of pesticide use and to guide pest control policies and practices. They are applied to agricultural, landscape and structural pest management by governmental agencies, private institutions and individuals. PRIs typically assess only the potential risks associated with the active ingredients because, with few exceptions, pesticide manufacturers disclose only the identity of the active ingredients which generally comprise only a minor portion of pesticide products. We show that when inert ingredients are identified and assessed by the same process as the active ingredient, the …

Slides: Water For Oil (Shale)?, Bart Miller

The Promise and Peril of Oil Shale Development (February 5)

Presenter: Bart Miller, Water Program Director, Western Resource Advocates

10 slides

Slides: The Peril Of Energy Usage, Mike Tupper

The Promise and Peril of Oil Shale Development (February 5)

Presenter: Mike Tupper, Executive Vice President, Composite Technology Development, Inc.

9 slides

Environmental Awareness, Adam Sharpe, Blake Baron

Student Environmental Law Films/Golden Tree Films

The film "Environmental Awareness" quizzed law students about a variety of environmental issues, demonstrating that their knowledge of current events often is laughably deficient.

Just A Reminder, Paul Huntington

Student Environmental Law Films/Golden Tree Films

A musical exploration of the challenges of being a law student. Original music by Paul Huntington.

Baltimore Urban Gardening, April Morton, Betty Franky, Emily Fisher, Erin Doran, Heather Sites

Student Environmental Law Films/Golden Tree Films

The student film “Baltimore Urban Gardening” highlights the benefits of creating spaces for and using locally grown produce.

Liability For Environmental Harm And Emerging Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Maryland Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Aftermath Of Copenhagen: Does International Law Have A Role To Play In A Global Response To Climate Change?, Jacob Werksman, Kirk Herbertson

Maryland Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Multiscalar Governance And Climate Change: Reflections On The Role Of States And Cities At Copenhagen, Hari M. Osofsky

Maryland Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Liability For Environmental Harm And Emerging Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental law and policy are undergoing rapid change at the global, national, and even local levels. The nations of the world continue to struggle to develop an effective global response to climate change. Transboundary pollution and resource management problems command regional attention even as nations work to upgrade their own environmental standards and their energy, transportation, and land use policies. Surprising environmental initiatives are emerging even from state and local governments.

In my previous work I have argued that globalization is affecting law and legal systems throughout the world in profound new ways. See Robert V. Percival, The Globalization of …

Ahistorical Indians And Reservation Resources, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The article is an in-depth exploration of the impacts of an Indian tribe's decision to pursue an environmentally destructive form of economic development. The history of Navajo Nation's coal leasing provides the background for the tribe's recent proposal to build a coal-fired power plant and the controversies surrounding the proposal and the environmental review process.

Qualitative, Quantitative, And Integrative Conservation, Jamison E. Colburn

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay for a symposium on new directions in environmental law, I reflect back on the last 35 years of Endangered Species Act (ESA) practice and offer several modest reforms. My claim is that conservation has been growing increasingly quantitative and risk-based, much like other fields of regulation, but that big problems lie ahead if this trend continues with the ESA as currently structured. In my view, the quantitative demands of listing species, designing recovery objectives, and designating so-called 'critical habitat' are depleting the resources we have put into the ESA because it is an expression of fundamentally qualitative …

Agenda: Best Practices For Community And Environmental Protection, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project, Colorado. Oil And Gas Conservation Commission

Best Practices for Community and Environmental Protection (October 14)

The first Intermountain BMP Project workshop, sponsored by the Natural Resources Law Center and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, was held in Rifle, Colorado on October 14, 2009 at the Garfield County Fairground for over 170 participants.

Speakers from Federal, state and local governments, the community, industry and environmental consultants, and conservation groups focused presentations and discussion on a greater understanding of what Best Management Practices (BMPs) are appropriate to the western slope of Colorado and how they are integrated into developments.

Slides: Bmp Project, Kent Kuster

Best Practices for Community and Environmental Protection (October 14)

Presenter: Kent Kuster, Consultation Coordinator, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE)

17 slides

Proceeding With (Pre)Caution: Environmental Principles As Interpretive Tools In Applications For Pre-Trial Injunctions, Heather Mcleod-Kilmurray

Dalhousie Law Journal

In many cases of imminent environmental harm, a trial may take years. To prevent harm in the meantime, pre-trial injunctions are essential. The author highlights the important role of interlocutory injunctions in Canadian environmental litigation, uncovers the judicial assumptions and attitudes toward the environment which these decisions reveal, and proposes a precautionary approach to interpreting the interlocutory injunction test in environmental cases. She argues that prevailing judicial attitudes and presumptions in relation to environmental claims often negatively influence how the discretionary elements in procedural rules governing pre-trial injunctions are applied. Although there has been much analysis of principles such as …

Tracer Studies Of Sheet Flow In The Florida Everglades, David T. Ho, Victor C. Engel, Evan A. Variano, Paul J. Schmieder, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Information on sheet flow patterns in the marsh ridge and slough habitat of the Florida Everglades is scarce, primarily because of difficulty in taking measurements across large enough spatial scales in such a heterogeneous environment. As part of the Everglades Tracer Release Experiment (EverTREx), two SF6 tracer releases were conducted to measure sheet flow in relatively intact ridge and slough habitats. The first was a pilot experiment that allowed the analytical equipment to be tested in the Everglades, and yielded some preliminary, coarse-scale measurements of advection and dispersion in multiple sloughs. In the second experiment, higher-resolution measurements of tracer distributions …

Planning For A Bull Market For Wetlands, Fred P. Bosselman

All Faculty Scholarship

Until recently, wetlands had value in the marketplace only as targets for destruction. Today, wetlands often have market value for uses that do not require that they be dredged and filled. Such opportunities include: 1. Carbon storage offsets for greenhouse gas emissions; 2. Mitigation banks for destruction of other wetlands; 3. Conservation banks for wildlife protection; 4. Tradable water quality protection rights; 5. Sites for growing algae or other biofuel crops. These new uses have valid public benefits, but most laws and ordinances were not written with these possibilities in mind. Planners and lawyers need to think about ways to …

What Local Climate Change Plans Can Teach Us About City Power, Katherine A. Trisolini

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Discussions of city power have long focused on cities’ power relative to higher levels of government and to each other. The diffuse causes of climate change offer an opportunity to revisit the question of city power by focusing more closely on the intended object of influence. Although these two perspectives on power will at times overlap, they are not identical. If we consider greenhouse gas emissions as the target, cities can employ their relatively minor powers to substantial effect and many of them appear to be trying to do so. But consideration of cities’ climate change policies alters the usual …

The Emergence Of Global Environmental Law, Tseming Yang, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

With the global growth of public concern about environmental issues over the last several decades, environmental legal norms have become increasingly internationalized. This development has been reflected both in the surge of international environmental agreements as well as the growth and increased sophistication of national environmental legal systems around the world. The result is the emergence of a set of legal principles and norms regarding the environment, such that one can arguably describe it as a body of law. After exploring the diverse forces that are contributing to the emergence of what we call “global environmental law,” this Article considers …

Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin, Ashira Ostrow

Scholarly Works

This Article proposes a federal wind siting policy modeled on the cooperative federalism framework of the TCA’s Siting Policy. Part I describes some advantages of wind energy, focusing specifically on the environmental, economic, and social benefits. This Part also discusses several technical obstacles to wind energy development, including the need to supplement wind energy with conventional energy sources and the lack of adequate transmission infrastructure. Part II assesses the current regulatory regime for the siting of wind turbines, reviewing general practices across the United States at both the state and local levels. Although a number of states have been active …

Foreword: Energy And The Environment: Empowering Consumers, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The conference Energy and the Environment: Empowering Consumers brought together legal scholars, attorneys, scientists, philosophers, journalists, sociologists, elected representatives, and agency experts. This symposium issue of the Hofstra Law Review presents a selection of papers from conference participants that, together, illustrate some of the opportunities, challenges, and diverse questions that arise in the effort to deploy energy and environmental law and policy to embrace individual consumers and combat climate change.

Climate Adaptation And Federalism: Mapping The Issues, Daniel F. Farber

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

There is a vigorous debate about the appropriate roles of the state and federal governments in reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change. ...
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This Article is a first step in mapping this new terrain. Part I provides a short introduction to climate adaptation. The United States will face significant climate impacts in the next few decades, and governmental responses will be required. Part II discusses the role of the federal government in setting adaptation standards, while Part III analyzes the appropriateness of state versus federal funding for adaptation. States are likely to play the leading role in funding …

The Idea Of Pollution, John Copeland Nagle

Journal Articles

Pollution is the primary target of environmental law. During the past forty years, hundreds of federal and state statutes, administrative regulations, and international treaties have established multiple approaches to addressing pollution of the air, water, and land. Yet the law still struggles to identify precisely what constitutes pollution, how much of it is tolerable, and what we should do about it.

But environmental pollution is hardly the only type of pollution. Historically, the idea of pollution referred to a host of effects upon human environments. This remains evident in contemporary anthropological literature, which studies the pollution beliefs of cultures throughout …

Canada, The Eu And Arctic Ocean Governance: A Tangled And Shifting Seascape And Future Directions, David Vanderzwaag, Timo Koivurova, Erik J. Molenaar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The objective of this paper is to examine (in a historical perspective) the roles of the European Union (EU) and Canada in governance and regulation of human activities in the Arctic Ocean. Section two describes the existing “tangled” nature of governance in the Arctic with a focus on law of the sea, approaches and challenges in the region, as well as on EU and Canadian participation in the activities of the Arctic Council. The “shifting seascape” in governance is next highlighted in section three with a review of increasing calls for change from scholars and other groups, recent governance initiatives …

Individual Carbon Emissions: The Low-Hanging Fruit, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jack Barkenbus, Jonathan Gilligan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The individual and household sector generates roughly 30 to 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is a potential source of prompt and large emissions reductions. Yet the assumption that only extensive government regulation will generate substantial reductions from the sector is a barrier to change, particularly in a political environment hostile to regulation. This Article demonstrates that prompt and large reductions can be achieved without relying predominantly on regulatory measures. The Article identifies seven "low-hanging fruit:" actions that have the potential to achieve large reductions at less than half the cost of the leading current federal legislation, require …

Slides: The Big Questions, Doug Kenney

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Doug Kenney, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado Law School

7 slides

Slides: Protecting Biodiversity Through Ecosystem Services, Barton "Buzz" Thompson

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Barton “Buzz” Thompson, Perry L. McCarty Director, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University Law School

14 slides

El Surgimiento Del Derecho Ambiental Global, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Legal systems across the globe are responding to environmental concerns in surprising new ways. As nations upgrade their environmental standards, some are transplanting law and regulatory policy innovations derived from the experience of other countries, including nations with very different legal and cultural traditions. New national, regional, and international initiatives have been undertaken both by governments and private organizations. Greater cross-border collaboration between government officials, nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations and other entities is shaping environmental policy in ways that blur traditional private/public land domestic/international distinctions. The result has been the emergence of a kind of “global environmental law” – law …