Natural Resources Law Commons^™

The Good, The Bad, And The Unnecessary : Forest Fire Suppression Funding And Forest Management Provisions Of The Consolidated Appropriations Act Of 2018, Peter B. Taylor

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects of scientific interest, and dismissing …

How International Oil Companies Could Assist Greece To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals: A Conversation Starter, Alexandra Sdoukou, Andreas Tornaritis, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This policy paper wishes to be a timely contribution towards a fruitful debate among stakeholders; it urges International Oil Companies (IOCs) to examine how the critical Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Greece can be integrated into their core business so that the oil and gas industry can contribute to the country’s sustainable growth.

Bridging The Information Gap: How Access To Land Contracts Can Serve Community Rights, Lara Wallis, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Land contracts (also known as investor-state contracts, or concession agreements) show what commitments a forestry, farming or renewable energy company has made and what the government has said the company can do on the land. These promises define the positive and harmful effects the company’s project could have on community members’ livelihoods and human rights, and on the environment.

Accessing land contracts is a crucial strategy for local organizations. This briefing note explains how local organizations can use land contracts and the Open Land Contracts repository (OpenLandContracts.org) to help communities to:

• Understand company and government obligations related to a company …

Introduction: What You Don't Know Does Protect You, Rebecca Roose

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Property In Ecology, Jonathan H. Adler

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

"I Had A Lakehouse In Tahoe": The Legal Ramifications Of California Tapping Lake Tahoe And How It Affects Homeowners, Gregory Stratz

Marquette Law Review

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Book Review: Jonathan P. Thompson, River Of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, And Green Behind The Gold King Mine Disaster (2018), Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

On August 5, 2015, contractors for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigating the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado accidently released some three million gallons of contaminated water into the Animas River, triggering weeks of front-page headlines, months of congressional hearings, and now years of litigation. River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster, a new book by Jonathan P. Thompson, suggests by its title a human folly behind this “disaster” much broader and deeper than one tragic accident wrought by EPA contractors. On this thesis, Thompson certainly delivers. However, what …

Rethinking Public Land Use Planning, Mark Squillace

Publications

The public land use planning process is broken. The land use plans of the principal multiple-use agencies—the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”)—are unnecessarily complex, take too long to complete, monopolize the time and resources of public land management agency staffs, and fail to engage the general public in any meaningful way. Moreover, the end result is too often a plan that is not sufficiently nimble to respond to changing conditions on the ground, a problem that appears to be accelerating due to climate change.

It might seem easy to chalk up these problems to …

Crow Indian Tribe V. United States, Hallee Kansman

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The protection status of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear continues to elicit debate and find its way into the courtroom. In Crow Indian Tribe v. United States, for the second time in the last decade, a court held the Service’s attempt to delist the Yellowstone Grizzly arbitrary and capricious. Specifically, the court found the Service’s evaluation of remnant populations, recalibration, and genetic health deficient. This case demonstrates the importance in and the resilient motivation behind preserving grizzly bear populations and genetics. As the practice of delisting a species under the Endangered Species Act continues, this case will provide important …

Martin V. United States, Mitch L. Werbell V

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Martin v. United States, the Federal Circuit Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment regulatory takings and exaction claim for want of ripeness when the claimant failed to apply for a permit, which would have allowed for an assessment of the cost of compliance with governmentally imposed requirements. By finding the claim unripe, the court stood firm on the historical view that federal courts may only adjudicate land-use regulatory takings and inverse condemnation claims on the merits after a regulating entity has made a final decision. However, jurisprudential evolution of the ripeness doctrine and judicial review of takings claims may …

The Renewable Power Of The Mine, Nicolas Maennling, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Access to affordable and reliable energy is key for the mining sector and with rising demand for minerals and falling ore grades, energy demand is estimated to increase by 36% by 2035. Today, energy produced and procured by mining companies is mostly fossil fuel based. This will have to change if the sector is to contribute to the decarbonization of the world economy, needed for countries to meet the target adopted at the Paris Agreement of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.

At the same time, the costs of solar, wind and battery storage systems have …

11th Marine Law Symposium: Legal Strategies For Climate Adaptation In Coastal New England 2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Marine Affairs Institute Conferences, Lectures, and Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Marine Law Symposium At Rwu Law To Focus On Legal Strategies For Climate Adaptation 11/08/2018, Edward Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

President Trump, The New Chicago School And The Future Of Environmental Law And Scholarship, Sarah B. Schindler

Faculty Publications

Recent presidents including Bill Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Barack Obama have refined how environmental law has been enacted and carried out. Under President Trump, the scope of public environmental law will most certainly narrow. It seems likely that the future of environmental law will depend not upon traditional federal command-and-control legislation or executive branch maneuvering, but instead upon activating environmentalism through expanded substantive areas and innovative regulatory techniques that fall outside the existing, traditional norms of environmental law and legal scholarship. This chapter is an attempt to acknowledge this monumental change, recognizing that these barriers to traditional environmental regulation …

Legal Influences On Shellfish Aquaculture Nursery Facility Siting In Rhode Island, Marine Affairs Institute, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Jordan Viana, Joseph Bingaman, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Western Organization Of Resource Councils V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, Seth Sivinski

Public Land & Resources Law Review

To what extent must the BLM analyze potential climate change impacts where millions of acres of public lands and federal mineral estates are being considered for coal development? Western Organization of Resource Councils v. BLM addresses this, setting the scope for NEPA-mandated environmental impact analysis and reasonable alternative consideration by federal agencies. Judge Brian Morris of the District of Montana eschewed BLM’s assertions that considering climate impacts would be speculative, instead requiring BLM to acknowledge scientific reality and include modern climate science in its NEPA review analysis.

Highway Culverts, Salmon Runs, And The Stevens Treaties: A Century Of Litigating Pacific Northwest Tribal Fishing Rights, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Isaac Stevens, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest during 1854 and 1855. A century and a half later in 2001, the United States joined 21 Indian tribes in filing a Request for Determination in the United States District Court for the District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged the State of Washington had violated those 150-year-old treaties, which remained in effect, by building and maintaining culverts under roads that prevented salmon passage. This litigation eventually reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in favor …

Collaboration Through Nepa: Achieving A Social License To Operate On Federal Public Lands, Temple Stoellinger, L. Steven Smutko, Jessica M. Western

Public Land & Resources Law Review

As demand and consumption of natural gas increases, so will drilling operations to extract the natural gas on federal public lands. Fueled by the shale gas revolution, natural gas drilling operations are now frequently taking place, not only in the highly documented urban settings, but also on federal public lands with high conservation value. The phenomenon of increased drilling in sensitive locations, both urban and remote, has sparked increased public opposition, requiring oil and gas producers to reconsider how they engage the public. Oil and gas producers have increasingly deployed the concept of a social license to operate to gain …

Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2015, the Obama Administration announced its conservation plans for the greater sage-grouse, an iconic bird of the intermountain west.Political leadership at the time described those plans as the “largest landscape-level conservation effort in U.S. history,”and they served as the foundation for a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) that a listing of the bird was not warranted under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Trump Administration appears poised to substantially amend the plans, although an array of interested parties have urged that the plans be left intact. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, conservation of …

Streamlining The Production Of Clean Energy: Proposals To Reform The Hydroelectricity Licensing Process, Travis Kavulla, Laura Farkas

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Hydroelectric power is an efficient and clean source of power. In an era when air emissions dominate public concern about the environmental effects of the energy sector, it is a paradox that among the most highly regulated energy projects are hydroelectric dams, which do not combust fuel. This is partly due to a failure of successive statutory enactments,which have transformed hydroelectric licensing from a regulatory “one-stop shop” with a single regulator, to a process chained to a bewilderingnumber of often conflicting regulatory agencies, often riven with delay. Hydroelectric licensing has also failed because its capacious standard of review encourages special-interest …

Keeping Power In Charge: Federal Hydropower And The Downstream Environment, Reed D. Benson

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Language Matters: Environmental Controversy And The Quest For Common Ground, Scott Slovic

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Center For Biological Diversity V. Zinke, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The oft-cited “arbitrary and capricious” standard revived the Center for Biological Diversity’s most recent legal challenge in its decades-long quest to see arctic grayling listed under the Endangered Species Act. While this Ninth Circuit decision did not grant grayling ESA protections, it did require the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its 2014 finding that listing grayling as threatened or endangered was unwarranted. In doing so, the court found “range,” as used in the ESA, vague while endorsing the FWS’s 2014 clarification of that term. Finally, this holding identified specific shortcomings of the challenged FWS finding, highlighting how …

Friends Of Animals V. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, Bradley E. Tinker

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Friends of Animals v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, the Ninth Circuit held that the plain language of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act allows for the removal of one species of bird to benefit another species. Friends of Animals argued that the Service’s experiment permitting the taking of one species––the barred owl––to advance the conservation of a different species––the northern spotted owl––violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The court, however, found that the Act delegates broad implementing discretion to the Secretary of the Interior, and neither the Act nor the underlying international conventions limit the taking of …

Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility V. United States Epa, F. Aaron Rains

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Prior to 2016, the EPA acknowledged that human activities significantly contribute to climate change. However, on March 9, 2017, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that significant debate regarding the issue remained in the scientific community. In response to these statements, a nonprofit organization filed a FOIA request with the EPA seeking any documents or records Pruitt may have used when formulating his statements or substantiating his position. The EPA refused to comply with the request, citing undue burden and improper interrogation and this action followed. Upon review, the District Court for the District of Columbia found the plaintiff’s FOIA request …

Get Out From Under My Land! Hydraulic Fracturing, Forced Pooling Or Unitization, And The Role Of The Dissenting Landowner, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article addresses the legal circumstances arising when a state agency authorizes oil and gas production operations beneath a landowner’s land against that landowner’s wishes. One might assume that, if a landowner wants to preserve his or her land from oil and gas development, the landowner could simply refuse to allow drilling to occur beneath the land. However, neighbors may want to develop the oil and gas resources beneath their own land. To satisfy the neighbors’ wishes, an oil and gas producer must assemble mineral production rights on or beneath enough contiguous land to satisfy state spacing and acreage requirements …

How International Oil Companies Could Assist The Republic Of Cyprus To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals: A Conversation Starter, Andreas Tornaritis, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This policy paper is addressed to International Oil Companies (IOCs), public officials and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) involved in the natural gas industry in Cyprus. There is currently no conversation happening in Cyprus on how the oil and gas industry could help Cyprus achieve their Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore, this paper hopes to initiate a debate and conversation around this topic. It provides an overview of the ways in which IOCs operating in Cyprus could contribute towards the sustainable development of the natural gas industry and assist the Republic of Cyprus to achieve a number of their 2030 Sustainable Development Goals …

Upstate Citizens For Equality, Inc. V. United States, Kirsa Shelkey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1935 is the proper avenue for Tribes pursuing restoration of their historic trust lands. The Oneida Indian Nation of New York long sought to reassert tribal jurisdiction over its historic homeland in Central New York. These efforts were largely unsuccessful until 2008 when the United States took 13,000 acres of this historic homeland into trust on behalf of the Tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act. This case affirms the federal government’s plenary powers over Indian Tribes, and that neither state sovereignty principles, nor the Enclave Clause upset that authority.

California Department Of Toxic Substances Control V. Westside Delivery, Llc, Mitch L. Werbell V

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in California Department of Toxic Substances Control v. Westside Delivery, LLC reminds prospective purchasers of tax-defaulted property of their responsibility for due diligence.The case addressed the reach of the third-party defense to a CERCLA cost recovery action. The court determined that CERCLA’s third-party defense did not apply to a company which purchased a contaminated property at a tax auction because of its “contractual relationship” with the former owner-polluter and because the relevant contaminating acts occurred “in connection with” the prior polluter’s ownership of the site.