Winning Safer Workplaces
Thousands of U.S. workers die on the job each year, the victims of unsafe workplaces. Countless more are injured, some permanently disabled, or exposed to toxic substances that could eventually harm or kill them. While the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has made progress to improve workplace safety since Congress passed the OSH Act in 1971, a new advocacy manual from the Center for Progressive Reform focuses on the progress on worker safety issues likely to come at the state and local levels, far from the general dysfunction in Washington.
Winning Safer Workplaces: A Manual for State and Local Policy Reform, written by a team of lawyers and public health researchers, offers local advocacy groups a series of policy proposals, all ripe for enactment by state legislatures, city or county councils, or state or local agencies.
In releasing the manual, CPR President Rena Steinzor — my co-author on the manual — explained that while CPR’s worker safety efforts have been aimed principally at OSHA in the past, the decision to the focus on advancing a state and local agenda was born of “a hard truth.” “When it comes to advancing the cause of worker safety, Washington is simply not …
In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, seven members of the Supreme Court upheld the most important feature of the EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program: the ability to require the vast majority of new and modified sources to install the “Best Available Control Technology” for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). As a consequence, eighty-three percent of significant new and modified sources will continue to be subject to the BACT requirement for their GHG emissions. Although the Court reversed, by a five-to-four vote, EPA’s contention that greenhouse gas emissions alone could trigger the PSD program, that reversal will have little impact because it will eliminate PSD requirements for only about three percent of significant stationary GHG sources. Justice Scalia’s majority opinion had some choice words for EPA, but it remains to be seen whether those words spell trouble for newly emerging climate regulations.
The …
Co-authored with David L. Markell.
Enforcement is widely acknowledged to be an indispensable feature of effective governance in the world of environmental protection and elsewhere. Unfortunately, criticisms of the U.S. government’s efforts to enforce the environmental laws began almost with the inception of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more than forty years ago – and they continue virtually unabated today.
In a 2012 report, for example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office(GAO) noted that “EPA has reported that it is not achieving all of the environmental and public health benefits it expected . . . because of substantial rates of noncompliance.” Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged in 2009 that “the level of significant non-compliance” with various Clean Water Act requirements had grown “unacceptably high.” Even EPA’s enforcement office has admitted significant shortcomings, noting that “violations are . . . too widespread, and enforcement too uneven.”
Assessments have found serious …
Direct implications are limited, but we'll be reading the tea leaves for future implications.
Scholars, lawyers, and judges will be spending a lot of time dissecting today’s ruling. Overall, it’s a bit like yesterday’s World Cup game — EPA didn’t win outright but it didn’t lose either.
Here are three key questions with some initial thoughts:
What is the direct legal impact of the ruling? This was really a split decision. Some sources will escape being covered by EPA’s greenhouse gas rule, but most sources (over 80%, according to the Court) remain covered. So EPA can claim that it gained more than it lost from the decision. It is also important to note that seven Justices have now confirmed the ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Clean Air Act covers greenhouse gases. The Court also failed to review, and thereby …
Power plants are not only one of the nation’s largest sources of greenhouse gases, they are also a significant source of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, and mercury, all of which have direct public health and welfare consequences. EPA’s recently proposed Clean Power Plan, which applies Clean Air Act § 111(d) to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the nation’s fleet of fossil-fuel power plants, will have important implications for these ubiquitous co-pollutants. Although the primary goal of the Clean Power Plan is to reduce GHGs, ancillary co-pollutant benefits are an important consideration in evaluating alternative mechanisms for controlling GHGs.
The key to maximizing co-pollutant benefits will be shifting away from coal-fired power, the energy source that emits the highest levels of both GHGs and co-pollutants, and encouraging a more widespread shift from fossil fuels to no-carbon alternatives like consumer energy efficiency and renewable energy …
With little notice in the West, India has just launched the most far-reaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) program in the world. The CSR law, which took effect April 1, requires large and mid-sized firms to contribute at least 2% of their pre-tax profits (averaged over the previous three years) to social, health, educational, or environmental causes. It also requires companies to prepare a formal CSR policy and to report annually on their CSR activities. The CSR law, section 135 of the Companies Act of 2013, was part of the first major overhaul of Indian corporate law in nearly sixty years. In February, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued regulations implementing the new law.
The money involved is huge for India. The CSR requirement is expected to raise $2 to $5 billion annually for the social sector. A comparable 2% spending requirement in the United States would raise …
On Monday, June 9, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court decided CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, --- U.S. ---, --- S. Ct. ---, 2014 WL 2560466 (June 9, 2014), a case that posed the seemingly simple legal question of whether the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (“CERCLA,” also known as Superfund), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601-9675, preempts state statues of repose. Behind that legal question, however, lies the issue of whether the plaintiffs landowners do or should have a state-law remedy for the fact that CTS Corporation contaminated their properties with toxic chemicals as part of its electronics business between 1959 and 1985.
CTS sold the property in 1987, and the plaintiffs brought suit in 2011, alleging a state-law nuisance claim. North Carolina, the state where the properties are located and where the suit was filed, has a 10-year statute of repose. CTS argued that the statute of …
OIRA should conduct a cost-benefit analysis of its own activities and explore alternatives to its current oversight methods.
A White House office called OIRA polices regulations by other agencies in the executive branch. OIRA basically performs the role of a traditional regulator – it issues regulations that bind other agencies, and agencies need OIRA approval before they can issue their own regulations. Essentially, then OIRA regulates agencies like EPA the same way that those agencies regulate industry. Issuing regulatory mandates and permits is a very traditional form of regulation, often called command and control.
There are a number of well-known criticisms of command-and-control regulation for being “one size fits all,” too rigid, unable to take advantage of information held by the regulated entities, and economically inefficient. One might predict that OIRA’s own regulations would suffer from similar flaws. To the extent that OIRA is trying to overcome …
The EPA’s June 2, 2014 announcement of a Clean Power Plan is momentous. On the surface, its scope, complexity, potential for myriad legal challenges and, not to mention, the difficulty of gathering reliable cost and benefit data, make it so. Mothers should advise their children to grow up to be energy lawyers, not cowboys. However, what makes this proposed rule more significant are the below the surface core principles and concepts that make the Clean Power Plan a game changer for the practice areas of environmental and energy law and policy.
It is a historical curiosity that the field of environmental law preceded energy law in the 1970s. It is also a historical curiosity that these two disciplines developed largely independently of each other, even though they are naturally connected by the physical fuel cycle. Environmental consequences follow the fuel cycle from the exploration and extraction …
On June 2, 2014, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued its much awaited and debated proposed Clean Air Act Section 111(d) regulations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing electric utility generating units, colloquially referred to as power plants. And because the largest GHG emitters in this category are coal burning plants, such plants and linked businesses and coal-intensive jurisdictions all have nervously awaited these proposals. In an earlier blog analysis, I assessed the statutory language and how it provides EPA with considerable latitude to allow for flexibility and trading of pollution.
Now we have the actual proposal, which in turn solicits comments as the next step in the notice and comment process. Weighing in at 645 pages, this proposal will be scrutinized by legions of lawyers, environmentalists, and political pundits in the coming months. Nevertheless, a quick review of this important proposal reveals …
