Water Law Commons^™

The Fight Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Spills And The Future Of The Lower Snake River Dams, Michael C. Blumm, Doug Deroy

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

One of the nation’s most longstanding environmental-energy conflicts concerns the plight of numerous Columbia Basin salmon species which must navigate the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS), a series of hydroelectric dams that make the basin one of the most highly developed in the world. Although the FCRPS dams produce a wealth of hydropower, the mortalities they cause due to the construction and operation of FCRPS dams led to Endangered Species Act listings for the basin’s salmon. Since those listings a quarter-century ago, the federal government has repeatedly failed to produce biological opinions that can survive judicial scrutiny. The latest …

Strategic Institutional Positioning: How We Have Come To Generate Environmental Law Without Congress, Donald J. Kochan

Texas A&M Law Review

The administrative state has emerged as a pervasive machine that has become the dominate generator of legal rules—despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution commits the legislative power to Congress alone. When examining legislation authorizing administrative agencies to promulgate rules, we are often left asking whether Congress “dele- gates” away its lawmaking authority by giving agencies too much power and discretion to decide what rules should be promulgated and to determine how rich to make their content. If the agencies get broad authority, it is not too hard to understand why they would fulsomely embrace the grant to its fullest. …

Managing Hurricane (And Other Natural Disaster) Risk, Robert Jerry Ii

Texas A&M Law Review

With the data showing that hurricanes are the most likely and serious of all of these disasters, we return to Hurricane Harvey. No one living in Texas—especially in the cities of Houston, Port Arthur, Bridge City, Rockport, Wharton, Conroe, Port Aransas, and Victoria, or more generally in the counties of Harris, Aransas, Nueces, Jefferson, Orange, Victoria, Calhoun, Matagorda, Brazoria, Galveston, Fort Bend, Montgomery, and Wharton—needs to be told that the U.S. needs a better approach to managing hurricane and other natural disaster risk, both in terms of pre-disaster planning and post-disaster recovery. Texans are not alone, as survivors of Hurricanes …

The Time Has Come For A Universal Water Tribunal, Tarek Majzoub, Fabienne Quilleré-Majzoub

Pace Environmental Law Review

Since its inception in 1981, the International Water Tribunal has emerged as a non-governmental body with a multidisciplinary composition and a mandate based on conventional and customary international water law, which holds public hearings in order to address water-related complaints. This Article describes the historical background of the proposed Universal Water Tribunal (“UWT”) and significant difficulties on the horizon facing the proposed Tribunal (including political, practical, and legal-technical considerations). It then summarizes the key factors of such Tribunal and, finally, touches upon the proposed model based on an expanded concept of jurisdiction. The main underlying thesis is that, whereas the …

State Public Nuisance Claims And Climate Change Adaptation, Albert C. Lin, Michael Burger

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article explores the potential for state public nuisance claims to facilitate adaptation, resource protection, and other climate change responses by coastal communities in California. The California public nuisance actions represent just the latest chapter in efforts to spur responses to climate change and attribute responsibility for climate change through the common law. Part II of this Article describes the California public nuisance lawsuits and situates them in the context of common law actions directed against climate change. Part III considers the preliminary defenses that defendants have raised and could raise in the California public nuisance lawsuits, including the existence …

Cleaning Up Our Toxic Coasts: A Precautionary And Human Health-Based Approach To Coastal Adaptation, Robin Kundis Craig

Pace Environmental Law Review

Hurricanes in the United States in 2005, 2012, and 2017 have all revealed an insidious problem for coastal climate change adaptation: toxic contamination in the coastal zone. As sea levels rise and violent coastal storms become increasingly frequent, this legacy of toxic pollution threatens immediate emergency response, longer term human health, and coastal ecosystems’ capacity to adapt to changing coastal conditions.

Focusing on Hurricane Harvey’s 2017 devastation of Houston, Texas, as its primary example, this Article first discusses the toxic legacy still present in many coastal environments. It then examines the existing laws available to clean up the coastal zone—CERCLA, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Red Mining: Mining And The Right To Water In Porgera, Papua New Guinea, Human Rights Clinic, Advanced Consortium On Cooperation, Conflict And Complexity (Ac4)

Human Rights Institute

The Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been one of the world’s highest producing gold mines over the course of its quarter-century history, and has accounted for a considerable percentage of PNG’s economic income. Yet many Porgeran residents live in deplorable conditions and feel trapped by the mine. Where they once farmed vegetables and collected fresh water from natural streams, they now see ever-expanding waste dumps. For years, security guards at the mine physically abused many residents, including sexually assaulting and gang-raping Porgeran women. 3 Residents feel the earth shake with …

The Fair Housing Act After Fifty Years: Opening Remarks, Julián Castro

Cardozo Law Review

Fifty years ago, on this day in late March, the United States was about to go through one of the darkest stretches in modern American history. At the end of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection. Just a few days later, of course, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. A couple of months after that, on June 6th, Robert Kennedy died as he campaigned for President of the United States. Cities across our country were in a state of total unrest. It was, as many have described it, a year …

Wildearth Guardians V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, Seth Sivinski

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. BLM, the District Court of Colorado showed that economic and developmental uncertainty is an area where agencies are given broad discretion in deciding whether an impact is reasonably foreseeable and requires a further conformity analysis under the Clean Air Act. This case exemplifies the tactical limitation of using climate change and the science around it to force greater analysis of projects undertaken by federal agencies. However, the court presented a potential roadmap for successful future challenges.

Solenex Llc V. Jewell, F. Aaron Rains

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Solenex LLC v. Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior cancelled a highly contentious oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, an environmentally sensitive and culturally significant area to the Blackfeet Tribe, nearly thirty years after the lease had been issued. Solenex, a Louisiana based oil and gas company and holder of the lease, brought this action to enjoin the cancellation. The District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with Solenex and found that the Secretary’s decision took an unreasonable amount of time and violated good-faith contractual obligations. On these grounds, the court found the Secretary’s …

Sierra Club V. Virginia Electric & Power Company, Thomas C. Mooney-Myers

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Sierra Club alleged Dominion violated the Clean Water Act by allowing arsenic to leak from coal ash storage pits into state waters. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found for the polluter, using a narrow definition of point source. Additionally, the Fourth Circuit deferred to agency interpretation of the polluter’s permit to find no violation occurred.

The Rock: The Role Water Plays In Our Lives, Ronald Griffin

Faculty Books and Book Contributions

We witness increasing interconnectedness of issues, internationalization of flows of goods and movement of labor, intergovernmental cooperation, new attitudes to personal rights and meaning of family, including human rights, as well as changes of values, moral principles and ethical conceptions.We live in a pervious world. Traditional boundaries have become permeable. One of the great challenges of our time is the response of the law to current developments. The authors of the collection of essays offered in this book seek to analyze some of these challenges.The essays are revised versions based on presentations at the International Conferences on Law organized by …

Red Mining: Mining And The Right To Water In Porgera, Papua New Guinea, Human Rights Institute, Earth Institute

Human Rights Institute

An interdisciplinary study of the human right to water in the villages near the Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) gold mine in Papua New Guinea (PNG) finds that local residents do not have consistent access to sufficient, acceptable, and safe water, or adequate information about their water resources. It concludes that the PNG government and the mining companies Barrick Gold and Zijin Mining, as well as their jointly controlled operator of the mine, Barrick (Niugini) Limited (BNL), can do more to meet their human rights obligations and responsibilities.

Can A State's Water Rights Be Damned? Environmental Flows And Federal Dams In The Supreme Court, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

Interstate rivers are subject to the doctrine of equitable apportionment, whereby the Supreme Court seeks to ensure that all states that share such rivers get a fair portion of their benefits. The Court has rarely issued an equitable apportionment decree, however, and there is little law on whether the doctrine protects river flows for environmental purposes. The ongoing Florida v. Georgia litigation in the Supreme Court raises this issue, as Florida seeks to limit consumptive uses by upstream Georgia to preserve flows in the Apalachicola River, which provide both economic and environmental benefits. This Article summarizes both the equitable apportionment …

Board Of Editors

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crowley Acknowledgement

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letter To The Reader

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Law At The Supreme Court Of Canada, Russell Brown

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.