Natural Resources Law Commons^™

Wind Power, National Security, And Sound Energy Policy, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Wind-generated electricity in the United States has grown by more than 400 percent since 2000. According to the Department of Energy, 6 percent of US land could supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the country. Yet, challenges remain in matching demand for electricity with supply of wind as well as achieving grid parity. Careful wind turbine and transmission line siting can occur through cooperation between federal, state, tribal, and civil society participation in decision-making. Tribal wind initiatives have shown that developing wind power can also benefit rural communities. Congress should pass a national …

The Public Order Of Ports, Charles H. Norchi

Faculty Publications

The OCLJ invited leading authorities to consider a range of maritime port law problems and policies. The ensuring articles treat port "incidents" that implicate and spawn international law including custom, conventions, and agreements and national or municipal law.

A Policy Maker’S Guide To Designing Payments For Ecosystem Services, James Salzman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past five years, there has been increasing interest around the globe in payment schemes for the provision of ecosystem services, such as water purification, carbon sequestration, flood control, etc. Written for an Asian Development Bank project in China, this report provides a user-friendly guide to designing payments for the provision of ecosystem services. Part I explains the different types of ecosystem services, different ways of assessing their value, and why they are traditionally under-protected by law and policy. This is followed by an analysis of when payments for services are a preferable approach to other policy instruments. Part …

Conserving Marine Wildlife Through World Trade Law, Eric A. Bilsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this Essay marshals the evidence that fisheries around the world are in peril from destructive fishing practices. Part II argues that most fisheries management regimes are ineffective at counteracting the political pressures and economic incentives that lead to unsustainable fishing. Part III makes the case that government subsidies are major enablers of overfishing. The fourth and final Part discusses the continuing efforts to use international trade regulation to eliminate overfishing subsidies and halt the collapse of the world's marine fish populations.

Assemblage-Oriented Ocean Resource Management: How The Marine Environment Washes Over Traditional Territorial Lines, John A. Duff

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay assesses challenges that arise when marine territorial boundaries do not encompass the appropriate assemblage of resources and relationships necessary for effective authority and management. It reviews the manner in which certain offshore resource uses have been "quasi-territorialized" by the application of other forms of jurisdiction. It also highlights regime-jurisdiction-private interest-oriented responses to territory-oriented challenges in the form of assemblages of authority, interests, space, and time. Given the scalar progression of the links in the discussion, the assessment moves from international principles to exercises of national sovereignty to domestic administration of space and resources to private legal interests.

The Unbearable Cost Of Skipping The Check: Property Rights, Takings Compensation & Ecological Protection In The Western Water Law Context, 17 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 1063 (2009), Scott Andrew Shepard

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Challenges Of Geologic Carbon Capture And Sequestration: A California Guide To The Cost Of Reducing Co2 Emissions, Les Lo Baugh, William L. Troutman

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Endangered Species Act: What We Talk About When We Talk About Recovery, Dale D. Goble

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Public Trust Doctrine: What A Tall Tale They Tell, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite continuing hostility towards the public trust doctrine because of its potential to defeat private property rights and the will of elected representatives, the doctrine refuses to die. It continues to assure public access to and protection of certain natural resources of communal value; in fact, the doctrine's geographic reach and the activities it protects have expanded beyond its original conception. It is this doctrinal accretion that has drawn the attention of Professor James Huffman, who in a recent article criticizes the "ambitions" of public trust scholars who see in "an expansive public trust doctrine . . . a powerful …

The Environmental Deficit: Applying Lessons From The Economic Recession, Christine A. Klein

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2007, the nation entered its greatest financial downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. What followed was a period of national introspection. Although prescriptions for financial rescue varied widely in the details, a surprisingly broad consensus emerged as to the underlying pathology of the crisis. This Article explores three principal contributing factors and the lessons associated with each that make up this pathology. These factors include: rejecting rules through deregulation, trivializing risk through overly optimistic analyses, and overconsumption supported by reckless borrowing and lending practices.

The powerful lessons from this pathology, considered by a stunned nation in the …

Protecting A Natural Resource Legacy While Promoting Reslience: Can It Be Done?, Alyson C. Flournoy

UF Law Faculty Publications

Our stock of natural resources, and the values and services they provide, are diminishing steadily over time. We have dozens of laws, enacted over a period of almost forty years that express the objective of stemming this tide. Yet, the inexorable, incremental loss continues. Scholars concerned with conservation of our natural capital have long wrestled with how best to improve the laws we have in place and to supplement the framework of existing law with newer approaches. One common theme in efforts to design progressive conservation law is how to better incorporate scientific insights into our legal regimes.

This effort …

Geologic Co2 Sequestration: Who Owns The Pore Space?, Owen L. Anderson

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Water Federalism And The Army Corps Of Engineers' Role In Eastern States Water Allocation, Robert Haskell Abrams

Journal Publications

It is black letter constitutional theory that the several states are the masters of their property law, and hence their water law. For that reason, states have been free to adopt regimes as widely different as reasonable use riparianism and prior appropriation, depending on local conditions and perceived needs. Superimposed on the same physical water resource network, is the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). The presence of Corps' facilities in basins now experiencing short supply opens the door to state and federal water allocation conflict that calls for mediation under the principles of water federalism, a doctrine that …

Andy Nuñez: His Life, Career, & Contributions, Bridgette Burbank, Jerold Widdison

Water Matters!

For years and years, reaching back well before his time in the Legislature, Rep. Nuñez has been a strong advocate not only for the state’s people but for its land and water resources.

Modern Lights, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article functions as a companion to a piece, Solar Rights, recently published in the Boston University Law Review. In that piece, the author analyzed the absence of a coherent legal framework for the treatment of solar rights - the rights to access and harness the rays of the sun. The growing popularity of, and need for, solar collector technology and other solar uses calls for reform. Answering the call for reform in Solar Rights, this Article proposes a framework within which a solar rights regime might be developed. First, as a baseline, any regime must recognize the natural characteristics …

CoWho? Kentucky's Need To Statutorily Define Property Interests In Geologically Sequestered Carbon Dioxide, E. Chase Dressman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Modern Lights, Sara C. Bronin

University of Colorado Law Review

This Article functions as a companion to a piece, Solar Rights, concurrently published in the Boston University Law Review.1 In that piece, the author analyzed the absence of a coherent legal framework for the treatment of solar rightsthe rights to access and harness the rays of the sun. The growing popularity of, and need for, solar collector technology and other solar uses calls for reform. Answering the call for reform in Solar Rights, this Article proposes a framework within which a solar rights regime might be developed. First, as a baseline, any regime must recognize the natural characteristics of sunlight. …

Adapting To Post-Oil Futures: Community Action, The Urban Sustainability Retrofit, And The Writings Of James Howard Kunstler, Brian Muller

University of Colorado Law Review

James Howard Kunstler has written prolifically about the problems of sustainability and livability in the modern American city. This Essay discusses Kunstler's view of adaptation and compares it to the various efforts underway in cities across the United States to address problems of climate change and resource depletion, which I generally term the urban "sustainability retrofit." Kunstler describes an adaptive path that is brutal, driven by resource scarcity, social collapse, and environmental disaster. Although Kunstler presents an extreme view, this Essay argues that his books are important because they demand that readers reflect about the conditions under which sustainable and …

The Tragedy Of The Commons: The Case Of The Blue Crab, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The blue crab has achieved iconic status throughout the Chesapeake Bay area, while the pugnacious crustacean and the majestic estuary are national treasures. The shallow waters provide optimal habitat for the species that has been deeply woven into the bay's economic and cultural fabric. Last year, after a respected committee ascertained that the crab was in jeopardy, anticipated future deterioration, and proffered extreme recommendations, Virginia and Maryland imposed draconian strictures which could reduce harvests by one third and help ameliorate the creature's depletion. A recent Executive Order, ambitiously designed by President Barack Obama to safeguard and restore the Chesapeake, illuminates …

Why Resilience May Not Always Be A Good Thing: Lessons In Ecosystem Restoration From Glen Canyon And The Everglades, Sandra B. Zellmer, Lance Gunderson

Faculty Law Review Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Precautionary Tale: Assessing Ecological Damages After The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Sanne Knudsen

Articles

To address the shortcomings of our existing damages paradigm--exemplified by the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound--this article suggests that we invoke the burden-shifting attributes of the precautionary principle to transfer the risk of long-term, unknown ecological harm to those who have caused the injury. Through such a risk transfer, this article posits that true costs of ecological injury would more properly be borne by actors capable of altering their behavior to avoid such injury in the first place. In addition, this article suggests offering defendants two options for incurring damages for ecological injuries--either accepting …

Attorney General's Authority To Defend Conservation Easements, Brian Eisenhower

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Aliens In The Garden, Jared A. Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines environmental rhetoric and argues that a nationalist conception of nature has long distorted environmental policies. Environmental discourse frequently seeks to explain the natural world by reference to the world of nations, a phenomenon that can be characterized as the “nationalization of nature.” A contemporary example of the nationalization of nature is the rhetoric of “invasive species,” which depicts harmful foreign plants and animals in ways that bear an uncanny resemblance to the demonization of foreigners by opponents of immigration. A typical newspaper article about invasive species, bearing the headline “Eeeeek! The eels are coming!,” warned about an …

Why Civil Liability For Disclosure Violations When Issuers Do Not Trade?, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

Civil damages liability for securities law periodic disclosure violations has come under attack, particularly fraud-on-the-market class-action lawsuits for investor losses incurred in connection with trading in the secondary market when the issuer has not sold shares. The main line of attack has been the weakness of the compensatory rationale for such suits. Without a compensatory justification, the attackers suggest, the availability of this cause of action is hard to defend given the very substantial use of social resources involved in the litigation that it generates. The critics are right concerning the weakness of the compensatory justification for civil liability. They …

Answering Brief For The United States - United States V. Washington, Docket No. 08-35794 (593 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 2009) (As Amended Jan. 10, 2010))

United States v. Washington, Docket No. 08-35794 (593 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 2009) (as amended Jan. 10, 2010))

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Managing Oil And Gas Development In Colorado: The New Cogcc Rules, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Managing Oil and Gas Development in Colorado: The New COGCC Rules (December 16)

NRLC Hot Topic held on December 16, 2008 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m. at the offices of Hogan and Hartson, Denver, Colorado.

Panelists from COGCC, the oil & gas industry, and environmental community, will present their perspectives on the soon-to-be-issued rules on oil and development in Colorado. Discussion and questions from attendees will follow.

Slides: Lower Arkansas Valley Super Ditch Company, Inc.: Water Leasing Program, Peter Nichols

Evolving Regional Frameworks for Ag-to-Urban Water Transfers (December 11)

Presenter: Peter Nichols, General Counsel of the Lower Arkansas Valley “Super Ditch” Company, Trout, Raley, Montano, Witwer & Freeman PC, Colorado

33 slides

Slides: Idaho Rental Pool: Rules And Procedures, Idaho Water Resource Board, Jerry R. Rigby

Evolving Regional Frameworks for Ag-to-Urban Water Transfers (December 11)

Presenter: Jerry Rigby, Counsel for Fremont‐Madison Irrigation District, Rigby, Thatcher, Andrus, Rigby & Moeller, Idaho

25 slides

Agenda: Evolving Regional Frameworks For Ag-To-Urban Water Transfers, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, Western Water Policy Program, Western Water Assessment (Program), Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Evolving Regional Frameworks for Ag-to-Urban Water Transfers (December 11)

The permanent transfer of water from agricultural users to municipalities has become a common feature of water management in several western states. In many cases, these voluntary market‐based transfers provide significant benefits to both the buyers and sellers, but many third parties—including remaining irrigators, rural businesses and communities dependent upon agricultural economies—have been negatively impacted. While some impacts of these so‐called “buy and dry” transfers are largely unavoidable, many can be lessened by temporary arrangements that only shift water to cities in years when municipal supplies are inadequate, such as drought and post‐drought storage recovery, and by consolidating individual farm‐to‐city …