Big Chicken Loses Round One in Groundbreaking Water Pollution Case
Thanks to a strong ruling from a federal judge in Baltimore Wednesday, large poultry companies are one step closer to being held accountable for the pollution (manure) the small farms that grow chickens for them generate. Responsibility: it’s not just for the little guys anymore.
In March, several environmental groups in Maryland sued Perdue Farms, Inc. and Hudson Farm, a chicken farm that raises Perdue’s chickens, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act. (I blogged earlier about the political brouhaha that erupted here.) Samples taken on five different occasions from a ditch flowing from Hudson Farm showed excessive levels of fecal coliform, E. coli, nitrogen, phosphorus, and ammonia. Agriculture is the largest source of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, contributing an estimated 38 percent of the nitrogen and 45 percent of the phosphorous.
The groundbreaking suit not only targeted the specific geographic source of the pollution – Hudson Farm and its stockpiles of uncovered poultry manure – but it also alleged that Perdue, a poultry company with $4 billion in sales annually, was responsible for the mess as well. The court rightly rejected Perdue’s argument that it should be dismissed from the lawsuit because it was a poultry …
Just before the July 4 recess, Representative George Miller, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, introduced the Miner Safety and Health Act of 2010. Recent explosions at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine, Tesoro’s Anacortes (WA) refinery, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, and U.S. Steel’s coke oven in Clairton (PA), highlight the life-threatening hazards that American workers face on a daily basis. Despite these hazards—and the myriad other less serious or even chronic hazards that don’t make headlines—workers continue to do their jobs day in and day out.
Contrast these workers’ diligence with that of certain members of Congress, who, in advance of today’s committee vote on the Miner Safety and Health Act, have said that they want to hold off on legislating until they see the official reports on the causes of the Upper Big …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
Last year, I noted that the interim report of the Interagency Ocean Task Force appointed by President Obama marked a promising step toward a national ocean policy. Now the Task Force has issued its final recommendations, which the President promptly began implementing.
A national ocean policy has been a long time coming. Back in 2003, the Pew Oceans Commission called for a new “unified national ocean policy based on protecting ecosystem health.” A year later, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy echoed many of the Pew Commission’s recommendations. But the Bush administration sat on those recommendations. President Bush did create an executive-branch Committee on Ocean Policy, but failed to give it any substantive mandate.
President Obama has filled that gap. On Monday, he issued an Executive Order (as yet unnumbered) replacing the Committee on Ocean Policy with a National Ocean Council …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
According to Thursday's NY Times, Senate Democrats have agreed to include a utilities-only cap-and-trade program in their energy bill. That’s certainly not ideal — it excludes a large number of industrial sources, which limits its environmental effectiveness. The utilities-only program will also be less economically efficient, since it precludes taking advantage of possible low-cost reductions available in the industrial sector.
Opinions will always differ about how much you can compromise before the game isn’t worth the candle. I’m generally inclined toward the view that half a loaf is better than none. In particular, passing any kind of federal climate legislation would be important as a first step toward something bigger. It would help reestablish momentum and would be an important symbolic recognition of the seriousness of the problem. In more concrete terms, it would bring the coal states into the …
The last time the WSJ attempted a big scoop on the Toyota story (attempting to discredit the Prius driver case in California), the article did not hold up well. This week's story ("Early Tests Pin Toyota Accidents on Drivers") has caught attention, and a response from NHTSA: the agency has "several more months of work to do" before it announces conclusions of its investigation.
From the response by Safety Research & Strategies Inc.:
Recall that Toyota reported to Congress in January that the company identified 37,900 customer contact reports “potentially related to sudden unintended acceleration” analyzing “dozens” of data recorders from the thousands of complaints doesn’t extrapolate to a driver error problem. Nor does it explain the large jump in complaint rates when Toyota moved to Electronic Throttle Control (ETC).
How unintended acceleration reports went up when electronic throttle control was added to vehicles …
A report released in Washington this morning highlights "The Hidden Struggles of Migrant Worker Women In The Maryland Crab Industry." The paper, by Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. and the International Human Right Law Clinic at American University Washington College of Law, is focused mostly on immigration policy issues (a little outside our purview), but I wanted to note the section on worker safety.
The report looks at the hundreds of Mexican women who travel every year to the Eastern Shore of Maryland on H-2B guestworker visas to work in the crab industry. The researchers interviewed more than 40 current or former workers, and found that:
Work-related injuries are common for many of the migrant workers in the Maryland crab industry. Use of sharp knives, contact with chemicals, lack of formal training, and the pace of work all contribute to injuries. ... In fact, cuts, scrapes …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
As he had promised, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Monday issued a new decision memorandum suspending certain deepwater drilling operations.Monday’s decision replaces the moratorium that the federal District Court in New Orleans enjoined on June 22, and which the Fifth Circuit declined to reinstate last week.
As I made clear in my post on the Fifth Circuit decision, I think both the District Court and the Fifth Circuit were wrong on the first moratorium. Even if they were right, however, this new one should pass muster.
The new decision calls a halt to exploratory drilling by rigs using subsurface blow-out preventers (the kind that failed on the Deepwater Horizon) or surface blow-out preventers on floating rigs, and to issuance of new permits for that kind of drilling. Like the first moratorium, it does not restrict production from existing wells. It will …
This post was written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and Michael Patoka, a student at the University of Maryland School of Law and research assistant to Steinzor.
Last October, the EPA proposed to regulate, for the first time, the toxic coal ash that sits in massive landfills and ponds next to coal-fired power plants across the nation. The 140 million tons of ash generated every year threaten to contaminate groundwater and cause catastrophic spills, like the 1-billion-gallon release that devastated Kingston, Tennessee in 2008. The EPA recommended that coal ash be listed as a subtitle C “hazardous waste,” making it subject to federally enforceable disposal requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). But by the time that the Office of Information and Regulatory Analysis (OIRA) was through “reviewing” the agency’s proposal, the rule had been watered down to suggest a choice of three alternatives …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit heard arguments Thursday on the Obama administration’s request that it stay the District Court’s injunction of the 6-month deepwater oil development moratorium, and by a 2-1 vote quickly rejected the request.
The moratorium halted any new drilling, and the granting of any new permits for drilling, in depths beyond 500 feet based on the Secretary of Interior’s finding that “deepwater drilling poses an unacceptable threat of serious and irreparable harm or damage to wildlife and the marine, coastal and human environment.” The District Court overturned the moratorium, finding that the Secretary had not adequately justified the breadth of the suspension.
The District Court’s decision to block the moratorium seems clearly wrong. Surely the Deepwater Horizon blowout, which the oil industry claims was entirely unexpected, together with the company’s inability to stem …
Over on Slate this weekend, William Saletan posted an Elena Kagan piece in which he describes a 1996 incident in which the future presumptive Supreme Court Justice, then working at the White House, commented on a draft statement on “partial birth abortion” by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
Congress was then on the verge of banning certain abortion procedures lumped together under the umbrella of “partial birth,” a name made up by the right wing and not otherwise used by doctors. ACOG had drafted a statement saying that its select panel on the subject had concluded that while it could identify no circumstances under which the “intact D&X” procedure, which seemed to be the procedure the right wingers in Congress were after, “would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman…the potential exists that legislation prohibiting …
