Before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, before the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and before the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, there was the TVA coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee. It was at Kingston, during the early morning hours on December 22, 2008, that an earthen dam holding back a 40-acre surface impoundment burst, releasing one billion gallons of inky sludge. The Kingston coal ash spill taught the American public about the catastrophic costs that can accompany so many types of large scale energy development; its aftermath continues to teach us that instituting the necessary reforms for protecting people and the environment against similar catastrophes in the future doesn’t come easy or quick.

Today marks the one-year anniversary since the EPA released its proposed rule for controlling the disposal of coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal to produce energy that …

This great country of ours is quite fond of its enduring myths: poor kids are able to become rich kids by working hard, the family farm feeds us a nutritious bounty, and small business is the engine that makes our economy sing. When most of us hear that musical phrase—smaaaall business—we think of the local florist, ice cream shop, or shoemaker. How startling, then, to discover that according to the Small Business Administration (SBA) a petroleum refinery employing 1,500 workers is also “small,” although of course not nearly so beautiful.

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I explained the plan Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) had concocted to hold existing health and safety rules hostage by allowing the chief counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy, an independent bureau within the SBA best known for its militant attacks on …

During the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions that greatly reduced the extent of waters protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA). These cases upset the clearly articulated regulatory definition of “waters of the United States” that had been consistently applied and widely accepted as valid for many years.   Not only did the decisions threaten millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of headwaters with destruction and unregulated pollutant discharges, but the most significant of the two was issued by a badly fractured Court, producing a great deal of confusion over which waters are regulated and which ones are not.  

In the SWANCC case (2001), the Supreme Court held that CWA jurisdiction could not be based on the presence of migratory birds at isolated, non-navigable, intrastate ponds.  In the second case, Rapanos (2006), the Court addressed the CWA’s application to wetlands …