Argument Preview: Can a Hovercraft Navigate the Shoals of Yukon-Charley?
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US). Click here to read Professor Zellmer's follow-up analysis of the oral arguments in this case and here to read her analysis of the opinion.
“Alaska is different.” So said Chief Justice John Roberts when the U.S. Supreme Court last took up this case two years ago in Sturgeon v. Frost (Sturgeon I). When the court hears a second oral argument in Sturgeon v. Frost (Sturgeon II) next Monday, it will once again consider whether a form of transportation unknown to most people outside of Alaska – a hovercraft (an amphibious vehicle that glides over land and water) – can be used in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve conservation system unit (CSU). Why, you may ask, would the court bother (twice) with such an arcane and seemingly inconsequential set of issues involving a place that most of us will never even visit, much less on a hovercraft?
The relatively narrow question presented in Sturgeon II is whether the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. 3103(c), withdrew the National Park Service’s authority to regulate activities …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US). Click here to read Professor Hammond's follow-up analysis of the oral arguments in this case.
On November 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, which could test the extent to which a court will explore a state legislature’s motives when evaluating whether a state statute is pre-empted by federal law. The facts concern the largest uranium deposit in the United States, located in south-central Virginia. The petitioners are owners of the deposit who wish to mine uranium, and they are challenging a 1983 statute by which the Virginia General Assembly passed a moratorium on uranium mining:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, permit applications for uranium mining shall not be accepted by any agency of the Commonwealth prior to …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
The Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment published a survey of state energy policies through 2017. The trend toward renewables has continued in 2018. Even after nearly two years of the Trump presidency, states haven't given up. Instead, they're moving forward aggressively. If anything, Trump seems to have stimulated these states to try even harder.
Here's a quick rundown of what's happened so far in 2018:
- California mandated that all new homes have solar energy and adopted bold new goals in a statute mandating 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.
- Colorado adopted California's car standards, including greenhouse gas standards.
- Connecticut adopted new laws requiring utilities to get 40 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2030, mandating that the state cut greenhouse gases 45 percent below 2001 levels by 2030, requiring that government-funded coastal projects take into account a projected sea …
This op-ed originally ran in the Fresno Bee.
Cities in the San Joaquin Valley continue to land among the American Lung Association's top 10 most polluted communities in the country. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the comment period closed on the Trump administration's plans to ratchet back federal emissions standards and eliminate California's authority to run its crucial car emissions programs. Although the administration has its eyes on greenhouse gas controls, what's at stake is California's ability to transition to low- and zero-emission vehicles, a transition essential to reducing the pollutants that threaten public health in California and elsewhere in the nation.
The federal government has the primary authority to set automobile pollution standards under the Clean Air Act. But Congress — recognizing California's serious air pollution challenges — stipulated that California is entitled to a "waiver" that lets the state set stricter standards, and which gives other states the option …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
In my last post, I talked about how Obama's Clean Power plan was the right response to a changing grid. The grid is in the process of changing even more. It was designed for some relatively straightforward tasks. The main power plants, mostly burning coal (but sometimes natural gas or nuclear energy), ran day and night. They were supplemented by other power plants when needed to meet load (customer demand). All the power flowed from these central power plants and was instantly used by consumers, who were billed based on their total consumption and sometimes on their peak demand. The fundamental rule was that increasing demand for power allowed for greater economies of scale, reducing costs. Thus the goal of electric utility companies was to increase demand for electricity, thereby lowering average production costs and increasing their profits.
Power systems today have begun …
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Click here for the follow-up post.
If you've been reading this blog or otherwise keeping up with environmental law, you've probably heard this a hundred times: In rolling back Obama's signature climate regulation, the Clean Power Plan, the Trump administration is relying on the idea that EPA's jurisdiction stops at the fence line. That is, according to the Trump folks, EPA can impose measures on each plant, but not measures that go beyond the fence line like requiring more use of renewable energy of a coal or natural gas generator. I've blogged previously about why this argument might not even apply because reducing your operating hours is something you can accomplish without getting close to the fence, let alone crossing it.
But today I want to talk a little more generally about why EPA should have some flexibility in interpreting the law to …
The Trump administration has few plans to protect workers from emerging workplace health and safety hazards, according to the regulatory agenda released by the White House on October 16. This is nothing new for this administration, which has consistently neglected to take up worker protections, instead focusing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) resources on delaying and rolling back existing safeguards.
Among the rules in OSHA's crosshairs, the agency plans to revoke a requirement for employers with 250 or more employees to electronically submit detailed logs of injuries and illnesses that occur at their establishments. The electronic reporting requirement for large firms is one piece of a 2016 rule finalized just before President Obama's term ended. The 2016 rule only sought to require establishments to submit injury and illness records that employers are already required to keep on site. But Trump's OSHA is basing its rollback …
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill.
While hurricanes like Florence are technically “natural” disasters, the Carolinas are experiencing the ways that the distinctly human-made problems of social and economic inequality reinforce and aggravate storm damage. Exhibit A is the catastrophic breaches and spills from the enormous manure “lagoons” located on North Carolina’s many factory-scale hog farms.
In the industry, these farms are known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, but nobody with a nose passing within a few miles of one would say that food is the thing in large concentrations. Torrential rainfall and floodwaters from Florence caused dozens of lagoons to overflow, releasing a toxic stew of contaminants harmful to human and ecological health, including E. coli and other bacteria.
The residents of the surrounding communities put most directly at risk are disproportionately poor or people of color. These communities have long suffered …
The Trump administration's Fall 2018 regulatory agenda dropped late last night, and as with previous iterations of this preview of what's to come on the regulatory front, it is chock full of numbers – at least the kinds of numbers partisan ideologues and regulated industries care about. But what these numbers don't reveal are the kinds of things a decent society cares about. Basic things like how well we are protecting the health and welfare of children, for example.
Already, we have heard President Trump and various White House officials congratulate themselves for their large number of deregulatory actions, the relatively small number of "regulatory" actions, and net cost savings to industry. These numbers are worse than misleading; they're a diversion. They're a bogus benchmark that tells us nothing about the quality of the regulations themselves or how well the Trump administration is doing in terms of fulfilling …
Cross-posted from LegalPlanet.
In its desperate effort to save the failing American coal industry, the Trump administration promised to use emergency powers to keep coal-fired power plants in operation even though they're not economically viable. That would have been the kind of disruptive change that Trump promised to bring to Washington. But the effort seems to have gone aground, according to Politico. This outcome tells us something about the gap between Trump's promises of committing regulatory mayhem and the realities of modern governance.
The Trump plan, which originated with a coal industry magnate and major Trump donor, would have required an extraordinary stretch of the statutes in question. The plan was to use one or more of a trio of emergency provisions. The first is a section of the Federal Power Act that authorizes the Department of Energy to order generators to run during wars or other …
