Environmental Law Commons^™

Session 1: Crew Seattle Presentation, Emily Alvarado, Jeanne Marie Coronado, Tory Laughlin Taylor, Colin Morgan-Cross

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: Is there Still a Place in Seattle for the Single-Family Detached Housing Typology, Given the Acute Need for Affordable Housing?

This expert panel will explore the intersection between existing zoning laws and well-established neighborhood patterns of development, on the one hand, and the acute need for the increased production and availability of affordable housing, in the greater Seattle area, including in and near the City of Seattle’s Central Business District, as well as other close-in employment centers, on the other hand. The genesis of this Special Topic in the Innovating the Built Environment SITIE2020 course came out of …

Opening Session, Annette Clark, Steven Bender, Peter Smirniotopoulos

SITIE Symposiums

The SITIE2020 Symposium: Innovating the Built Environment was offered entirely online, through the Zoom platform. Each of six (6) symposium sessions, outlined below, were offered in a continuous Zoom session with breaks throughout the day, allowing our audience to select those sessions of greatest interest to them. Students enrolled in Professor Smirniotopoulos’s Summer Institute course—Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change—participated all day.

Proceedings Of The Sitie2020 Symposium, Seattle Journal Of Technology, Environmental, And Innovation Law

SITIE Symposiums

Complete Summary of Proceedings.

Indigenous Feminism Perspectives On Environmental Justice, Deborah Mcgregor

Articles & Book Chapters

In this chapter, you will learn about the emergence of a distinct theoretical, methodological, and practical approach for accounting for gender in relation to environmental justice called Indigenous feminism. Indigenous feminism will be defined and outlined as an important field of study to advance the contributions, insights, rights, and responsibilities of Indigenous women. While the ideology of feminism has been in existence for decades, Indigenous feminism has only recently emerged. Joyce Green, an Indigenous scholar, writes that Indigenous feminism seeks to “raise issues of colonialism, racism and sexism and unpleasant synergies between these three violations of human rights” (Green, 2007, …

Hatching A Plan For Local Communities: Environmental Justice In Poultry Siting Decisions, Diana Stanley

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

One of the implementation problems for environmental justice is reconciling the need to protect public health with the economic realities of struggling communities. This article explores that tension through the lens of siting decisions for large scale poultry operations in rural communities. Poultry siting decisions have major economic and environmental impacts and have been underdiscussed in the environmental justice literature. This article focuses on the role of law and policy in concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) siting— from community benefit agreements to Right to Farm legislation. It uses a Kansas CAFO siting and the wider Kansas experience as a case …

Table Of Contents

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Of Hatcheries And Habitat: Old And New Conservation Assumptions In The Pacific Salmon Treaty, Paul Stanton Kibel

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

The 1985 Pacific Salmon Treaty between Canada and the United States was negotiated to deal with evidence that Pacific salmon stocks originating in Canada and the United States were in decline. The Pacific Salmon Treaty sought to establish total annual fishing limits for Canada and the United States that were consistent with the sustainable conservation of Pacific salmon stocks, and to base the total allowable catch for Canadian fishermen on forecasts of the total abundance of salmon. As the Pacific Salmon Treaty has been implemented, however, there has been a re-occurring pattern of annual abundance forecasts overestimating the actual abundance …

A Big Fracking Deal: Pennsylvania's Departure From Traditional Rule Of Capture Interpretation Paves Way For Fracking Trespass Claims, Andrew Belack

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

This Comment explores the Pennsylvania Superior Court's rejection of the traditional rule of capture as it applies to oil extraction from adjacent land parcels using the hydraulic-fracturing method. At the time of writing, the Pennsylvania Superior Court's departure from the rule of capture has opened the door for trespass claims filed by an adjacent land owner, when oil under her property is extracted by a neighboring frack well. This Comment also examines the various health and environmental concerns that are consequent of the hydraulic-fracturing method of oil extraction.

Nepa, Sepa, And The Evergreen-House Gas State: How Washington's State Environmental Policy Act And The Absence Of Greenhouse Gas Calculation Guidance Negatively Impacts Future Project Proposals, Macee Utecht

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires all federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of a proposed action that may significantly affect the environment. In addition to outlining the important pieces of NEPA, this article explores the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), Washington’s state-equivalent to NEPA. Established in 1971 and modeled after NEPA, SEPA requires that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be prepared for any governmental project proposal that significantly affects the environment. Currently under both state and federal law, there is no rule or guidance that instructs project applicants on how to calculate greenhouse gas emissions in a …

Mechanisms For Consultation And Free, Prior And Informed Consent In The Negotiation Of Investment Contracts, Sam Szoke-Burke, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Investor-state contracts are regularly used in low-and middle-income countries to grant concessions for land-based and natural resource investments, such as agricultural, extractive industry, forestry, or renewable energy projects. These contracts are rarely negotiated in the presence of, or with meaningful input from, the people who risk being adversely affected by the project. This practice will usually risk violating requirements for meaningful consultation, and, where applicable, free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), and is particularly concerning when the investor-state contract gives the investor company rights to lands or resources over which local communities have legitimate claims.

This article explores how consultation …

Best Practices In Data Driven Development Planning In Mining Regions, Nicolas Maennling, Josefina Correa

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Strategic development planning has long been used by private and public sectors to guide actions that will lead to a determined goal in the medium- to long-term. The SDG framework has helped to create a common language of what development means, what the global objectives are by 2030, and how progress can be measured. With the world entering an era in which data is generated and used at an unprecedented scale, data and ICT systems should be used to better inform policy decision making and help evaluate progress to hold stakeholders accountable to their promises and performance. This report outlines …

The Road To Paris Runs Through Delaware: Climate Litigation And Directors’ Duties, Lisa Benjamin

Utah Law Review

As political and regulatory battles over climate change rage in the United States, and the Trump Administration unwinds regulation on climate change, the directors of some of the largest, fossil fuel corporations, often referred to as “carbon-majors”, are facing a barrage of climate litigation claims. This is the second time directors of these corporations have faced litigation. The first wave of litigation against carbon majors failed for a number of reasons, including judicial reluctance to engage with the complex issue of climate change. However, climate litigation is evolving. In this second wave of litigation judges have started to engage more …

Environmental Law, Travis M. Trimble

Mercer Law Review

Notable cases decided in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in 2019 all arose out of disputes that originated under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Eleventh Circuit held that, in preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in connection with its decision to issue a dredge and fill permit under Section 404 of the CWA, the Corps of Engineers (Corps) was not required to consider potentially negative environmental effects resulting from activity made possible by the permit where the agency had no authority independently to regulate the effects. The court also held that the Environmental Protection …

Evidence Brief: Impact Assessment And Responsible Business Conduct, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons, Adebayo Majekolagbe

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This Evidence Brief provides a concise overview of the April 2020 report, Sara Seck & Penelope Simons, "Impact Assessment and Responsible Business Guidance Tools in the Extractive Sector: Implications for Human Rights, Gender and Stakeholder Engagement" (Draft Final Report for the SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Informing Best Practices in Environmental and Impact Assessments, 13 April 2020).

Legal Requirements For Equitable Design And Implementation Of Flood Buyout Programs In Rhode Island, Sarah Friedman, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Perception And Excessive Valuation Of Small, Publicized Drinking Water Risks, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Low probability risks create challenges for individual decisions and potential pressures for government regulation. This article reports original survey evidence regarding the public’s perception and valuation of water-related risks from plastic bottles with bisphenol A, residues in drinking water of the herbicide atrazine, and trace amounts of prescription drugs in water. People who believe that they face high water-related risks generally believe that the risks apply and, given that belief, are willing to pay more to limit the risk. However, the expressed willingness to pay for risk reductions is inordinately high even among those who are unsure of whether they …

Regulation Of Lobster Bait Alternatives In New England, Victoria Rosa, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

False Foods: Harmonizing The Eu And Us Organics Programs, Elizabeth G. Fudge

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The growth of the importation and exportation of organic foods in recent years has led governments around the globe to take more aggressive approaches in overseeing and certifying such products. Currently, there is a discrepancy in how states certify and respond to non-compliance issues for imported organic products. This creates a strong need to harmonize organics programs, specifically between the EU and US programs, as they are the two largest consumers of organic products. Through auditing both the EU and US organic import programs, significant issues of non-compliance became exceedingly clear. This Note argues that the best solution for addressing …

The Paradox Of Automation As Anti-Bias Intervention, Ifeoma Ajunwa

Cardozo Law Review

A received wisdom is that automated decision-making serves as an anti-bias intervention. The conceit is that removing humans from the decision-making process will also eliminate human bias. The paradox, however, is that in some instances, automated decision-making has served to replicate and amplify bias. With a case study of the algorithmic capture of hiring as a heuristic device, this Article provides a taxonomy of problematic features associated with algorithmic decision-making as anti-bias intervention and argues that those features are at odds with the fundamental principle of equal opportunity in employment. To examine these problematic features within the context of algorithmic …