Water Law Commons^™

The Effect Of The Syrian Crisis On Jordanian Internal Security, Andrew E. Szparaga

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Jordan has a refugee crisis; between 620,000 and 1.3 million Syrian refugees are seeking refuge in Jordan. This report aims to answer which aspect of Jordanian security the refugees have the biggest effect on. It also aims to answer whether the refugees based in camps, like Za’atari, or those integrated into the Jordanian communities are more threatening to internal security. Because many argue that Syrian refugees have a negative effect on the economic, environmental, military, political, and social securities of Jordan, many believe that they might pose a possible threat to the country’s internal security factors. The Syrian refugees have …

Blueprint For The Great Lakes Trail, Melissa K. Scanlan

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The Great Lakes are vast yet vulnerable. There is a need to focus the public’s attention on the significance of the lakes for the region as a cohesive, binational whole. To address this need, build on existing water law, and engage the public, this Article provides a blueprint to establish a Great Lakes Trail on the shores of the Great Lakes. The Trail will link together 10,000 miles of coastline and provide the longest marked walking trail in the world. It will demarcate an already existing, yet largely unrecognized, public trust easement and engage the public with their common heritage …

Legal Protection For Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems, Collin Gannon

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Note concerns the legal protection of groundwater-dependent ecosystems in the United States and abroad. By first describing the science and ecology of ecosystems that are dependent on groundwater and then surveying the current American legal system that fails to adequately protect groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs), this Note proposes legal reforms that could vastly improve groundwater management systems. State protection of GDEs is sparse and often only operates indirectly as a result of states’ water policies focused on water quantity upkeep for consumptive purposes. Part I provides an overview of GDEs. Part II discusses state legal protection, including indirect state protection …

Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe - Fish Springs Ranch Settlement Act, United States 113th Congress

Native American Water Rights Settlement Project

The overall purpose of this Act is to ratify a water settlement agreement affecting the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, and for other purposes.

The Failings Of The Tri-State Water Negotiations: Lessons To Be Learned From International Law, Michael Keene

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Three's A Crowd: Examining Georgia's Options In The Tri-State Water Wars Under Principles Of International Law, Eva M. Lamanna

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Domestic Solutions To The International Problem Of Water Scarcity: Singapore, A Case Study, Suzanne T. Lewis

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

River Of Contention: Scarcity Discourse And Water Competition In Highland Peru, Barbara Lynch

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

International Law In A Time Of Scarcity: An Introduction, Harlan G. Cohen

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Celebrating The Great Law: The Wilderness Act At 50, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment, The Wilderness Society

Celebrating the Great Law: The Wilderness Act at 50 (September 4-5)

"A conference sponsored by the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment and The Wilderness Society."

On September 3, 2014, the National Wilderness Preservation System—established and protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964—celebrates its 50th anniversary. We are gathering on September 4th and 5th to celebrate Wilderness—“ornery old wilderness, scratchy, sweaty, and distant, but sacred every step of the way”—and to commemorate the great law so central to its protection.

This is not an ordinary conference, full of dry presentations or heated policy debates. Instead, this will be a full-throated love song to wild country. We have brought …

Clear As Mud: Recreating Public Water Rights That Already Exist, Kathryn A. Tipple

Utah Law Review

“Speculation. Water monopoly. Land monopoly. . . . John Wesley Powell was pretty well convinced that those would be the fruits of a western land policy based on wishful thinking, willfulness, and lousy science.”186 PWR 107 was created to avoid water monopolization through land reservation. However, it would seem that management of public water reserves on federal lands has succumbed to some of John Wesley Powell’s concerns: management has been incomplete, ad hoc, and potentially based on incomplete hydrological data. PWR 107, as well as federal water reserves in general, pits western states against the BLM where there is a …

Public Water, Private Rights: All Are Not Equally Protected When The State Allows Some To Divert Small Quantities Of Ground Water Outside The Permitting System, Carolyn A. Sime

Montana Law Review

Public Water, Private Rights: All Are Not Equally Protected When The State Allows Some To Divert Small Quantities Of Ground Water Outside The Permitting System

Cooperative Transboundary Mechanism, Alena Drieschova, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Management of transboundary waters in increasingly becoming more challenging, and climate change is likely to exacerbate these pressures. Not least because climate change is a global issue, adaptation will require an international response. This book aims to identify issues, both theoretical and practical, that States face in establishing cooperative transboundary mechanisms to effectively adapt water management to climate change. Furthermore, it will address complex legal hurdles that existing transboundary water institutions face when attempting to adapt existing mechanisms to function in a changing climate. It will also provide an overview of best practices in transboundary adaptive water governance thus far, …

Washington's Water Right Impairment Standard: How The Current Interpretation Impedes The State's Policy Of Maximizing Net Benefits, Matthew Rajnus

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

Washington manages water rights under conflicting goals—maximizing net benefits while protecting water rights from any impairment. Over time, the state judiciary, often at the request of the Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology), has elevated the water right impairment standard to an absolute protection. Initially, Division III of the Washington Court of Appeals held that it was proper for Ecology to require a modeled impact of 0.004 percent in river flows, finding that this was substantial and could not be allowed; then, the Washington Supreme Court concluded that any impact constituted impairment; and most recently, the Court paradoxically declared that instream …

Global Water Resources & Publications, Taryn L. Rucinski

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Before we as a society can begin crafting innovative legal solutions to help combat the global water crisis, researchers and experts in the field first need access to sound sources of scientific information. Despite the seeming simplicity of that goal, locating research about water, sanitation, and agricultural conditions, especially in developing countries, can be immensely challenging as it is complicated by issues of language, currency, scope, and accuracy. The purpose of this note is to provide practitioners with a list of free, high quality resources that should help make their research in this area a bit more accessible.

On Local Fracking Bans: Policy And Preemption In New Mexico, Alex Ritchie

Natural Resources Journal

In the midst of the hydraulic fracturing revolution, elected officials in Mora County, New Mexico recently banned all oil and gas production within the county. But the officials went even further, stripping corporations of constitutional rights and declaring the constitutions of the United States and the state of New Mexico illegal if interpreted as inconsistent with the ordinance. Why would a small rural county like Mora with no oil and gas operations to speak of adopt such an extreme ordinance? This article applies economics, political choice, and localism theories to argue that Mora County’s decision may be at least partly …

Hydraulic Fracturing: If Fractures Cross Property Lines, Is There An Actionable Subsurface Trespass, Keith B. Hall

Natural Resources Journal

The law recognizes trespass liability for subsurface intrusions, at least in some circumstances. Further, courts sometimes have stated that ownership of land extends to the earth’s center. But such statements are dicta. Few courts have carefully considered the maximum extent of subsurface ownership or subsurface trespass liability. Courts in two jurisdictions have recently addressed whether a person incurs liability when he causes hydraulic fracturing fluid to intrude into the subsurface of a neighbor’s land, but the courts reached opposite conclusions, with each suggesting that public policy supported its position. Neither adequately examined the legal issues. Careful consideration of trespass concepts …

Can The United States Control Its Natural Gas: International Trade Implications Of Restrictions On Liquefied Natural Gas Exports, Adam Eldean

Natural Resources Journal

This article examines the cross-section between energy, environmental, and international law while exploring the recent developments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to non-free trade agreement countries, and considers how international free trade agreements affect efforts to restrict or limit exports of LNG. The article discusses the environmental and economic impacts of large-scale exports of LNG, but argues that efforts to stifle LNG exports will ultimately fail regardless of potential negative impacts due to conflict with existing international trade agreements, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since approval of export licenses …

Regulating Water And War In Iraq: A Dangerous Dark Side Of New Governance, Tracey Leigh Dowdeswell, Patricia Hania

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the legal scholarship, the 'new governance' mode of governance advances an administrative arrangement where decision-making is shared amongst a range of actors, both public and private. The flexible, responsive, and collaborative governance orientation is intended to counter the ill effects of a coercive, top-down, state-centric, command-and-control approach to governance. Critics contend the new governance framework can displace the interests of local communities, disempower individuals, and dislodge basic human rights. The U.S. military has adopted such an adaptive approach in its own governance structure, which in this article is referred to as: the new governance "mentality." This mentality of governance …

Consequences For Cleanup: Epa Gets Serious About Weak Watershed Improvement Plans, Rena I. Steinzor, Anne Havemann

Faculty Scholarship

In a landmark series of reports issued on June 26, 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put the seven jurisdictions that pollute the Chesapeake Bay on notice that their plans for reducing nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment fall short of where they must be to make cleanup by 2025 a reality. By EPA’s reckoning, Pennsylvania and Delaware were furthest off the mark, but Maryland, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia face EPA action if they fail to substantially improve their plans. Of the seven jurisdictions, only Washington, D.C. escaped serious criticism.

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

A Regulatory Comparison Of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Disclosure Regimes In The United States, Canada, And Australia, Allan Ingelson, Tina Hunter

Natural Resources Journal

Numerous state, provincial, and federal governments in the United States, Canada, and Australia have created guidelines, legislation, and/or regulations (or are in the process of doing so) in response to public concerns about water contamination from hydraulic fracturing. This article will compare and analyze three national regimes in the leading states and provinces in which laws have been amended, proposed, or adopted to address public concerns about the chemicals and additives in hydraulic fracturing fluids used to produce unconventional hydrocarbons. New regulations, recent legislative amendments, and, in some cases, new statutes have been proposed or adopted in the past few …

Goal-Oriented Disclosure Design For Shale Oil And Gas Development, Kate Konschnik

Natural Resources Journal

States have acted quickly to respond to the public’s demand for information on the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Proponents of these disclosure requirements have relied on a number of policy rationales. However, the resulting disclosure systems may not be achieving stated goals. Ineffective disclosure requirements risk undermining public confidence in the disclosure process and waste an important opportunity to put these disclosures to work. This article suggests using a Goal-Oriented Disclosure Design approach to HFC disclosure, built around the goals for disclosure, the information end users need to target in pursuit of each goal, and the feedback loops those …

Assessing The Scope Of The National Environmental Policy Act: Recent Attempts By Environmentalists To Add Climate Change Considerations Into Nepa Review, Maureen O'Dea Brill

Natural Resources Journal

As the United States continues its roaring ramp up as the world’s leading natural gas producer, the environmental community is trying to force the federal government to account for the aggregate impact of domestic natural gas production from shale, especially in the context of climate change. To achieve this goal, environmental organizations have sought to employ the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law aimed at increasing government awareness of the broader environmental consequences of federal action. This article explores the two ways in which environmental organizations have tried to expand federal environmental reviews to include climate change considerations under …

Environmental Law, Eleventh Circuit Survey, Travis M. Trimble

Scholarly Works

In 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected a challenge to the Navy's Undersea Warfare Training Range (Range) off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, based on potential impacts the Range could have to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and other endangered species. The court held that the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had met their obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA as amended and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA as amended thus far in the project.' The court also decided two cases under the Clean …

Slides: What We Know (And Don't Know) About Air Quality Impacts Of Oil And Gas Development, Anna Karion

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

Presenter: Anna Karion, NOAA/ESRL, University of Colorado/CIRES

35 slides

Slides: The Efd Program: Addressing Environmental Issues And Increasing Environmental Awareness, Richard Haut

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

Presenter: Rich Haut, Houston Advanced Research Center

8 slides

Slides: Details Of The Regulatory Framework: Air Quality Regulation Of Oil And Gas Development, Olivia D. Lucas

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

Presenter: Olivia D. Lucas, Esq., Counsel, Faegre Baker Daniels

22 slides

Slides: Regulating Oil And Gas Emissions In The Denver Julesberg Basin, Garry Kaufman

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

Presenter: Garry Kaufman, Deputy Director, Colorado Air Pollution Control Division

25 slides

Slides: The Stronger State Review Process: Draft Air Quality Guideline, Bruce Baizel

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

Presenter: Bruce Baizel, Chair, STRONGER Board

17 slides