Ten years ago, after NHTSA received reports of numerous deaths and injuries linked to Firestone tires and Ford Explorers, Congress passed the TREAD Act, bolstering the authority of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to identify possible defects in vehicles and tires by collecting information (“early warning data”) from auto and tire manufacturers. The law requires disclosure of data about incidents involving deaths or injuries, injury and property damage claims (including lawsuits), consumer complaints, warranty claims, field reports (problems reported from dealers, for example), and production data. Ten years later, the Toyota scandal is here, with lives lost. NHTSA is blamed for failing to connect the dots, and Toyota is criticized for a “culture of secrecy.”

What happened? How could a law designed to improve access to early warning signs of trouble apparently fail so spectacularly? The story is complicated and still emerging, but we will …

Today the Administration released its draft strategy for the Chesapeake Bay. Public comment runs through January 8, and the final strategy is due in May.

There's a lot to read. But here's one point off the bat that's of note:

Regulatory authority will be expanded to increase accountability for pollution and strengthen permits for animal agriculture, urban/suburban stormwater and new sources. . . . EPA will also initiate rulemaking to increase coverage and raise standards for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), municipal stormwater, and new dischargers of pollution.

EPA is taking a step in the right direction with these proposed steps to address runoff from agricultural pollution sources. Right now the EPA has the authority, under the Clean Water Act, to start tackling this problem. But EPA's approach to CAFOs (factory farms), as we’ve said before, has been frustrating for many years. CAFOs are …

As climate change legislation awaits action in the Senate, serious and complicated legal and policy questions about the tools designed to reduce carbon emissions remain. Truly, the climate change debate operates in two distinct worlds. The first is becoming increasingly hysterical, consisting of sensational and camera-ready protests and attacks underwritten by groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers. The second rages below the media waterline, in the wonky weeds of policy and legal scholarship. The pitchforks aren’t out in the second realm, but issues debated are crucial nevertheless.

CPR Member Scholars Bill Funk, Lesley McAllister, and Victor Flatt have recently published articles discussing several important aspects of both existing and emerging efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

• Bill Funk, in his article Constitutional Implications of Regional CO2 Cap-and-Trade Programs: The Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative As Case in Point in the …

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009, introduced today by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md), is a marked improvement from legislation in past years and demonstrates the Senator's continued leadership on restoring one of this country's greatest natural resources. The bill rightly emphasizes the implementation and enforcement of the Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), which will be issued in draft form by the EPA later this year and finalized by December 2010. It requires Bay states to submit biennial progress reports and empowers the EPA to withhold funding for failure to do so. It also mandates no net increases in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loading from the urban and suburban sector.

Today's bill takes big steps toward restoring the Chesapeake Bay, but it should be improved by adding an independent evaluator to monitor the states' performance. The bill requires the Inspector …

Today PennFuture released a report finding that the amount of liquid manure applied to farms in Pennsylvania’s Octoraro watershed has increased by 40 percent over the past five years to 108 million gallons annually. The amount of nitrogen produced by livestock in the watershed is equal to the amount generated by approximately 370,000 people each year.

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the Octoraro watershed doesn’t stay in the watershed. The watershed, which includes parts of Lancaster and Chester counties, drains into the Susquehanna River, the Chesapeake Bay’s largest tributary. According to the report, 99 percent of all liquid manure produced in the Octoraro watershed is applied on fields within the watershed.

Everyone who follows Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts knows that the federal and state partners in the Bay Program make promises they don’t intend to keep because, ultimately, the states will …

Today’s New York Times article about excess manure in the water is a stark reminder of what can happen when an environmental problem isn’t addressed: people get really sick.

While the article is shocking -- it describes how families in Wisconsin living close to dairy farms suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach problems, and severe ear infections from parasites and bacteria that seeped into the drinking water -- it restates what a lot of people have known for a long time. We are failing to protect people from agricultural runoff because the Clean Water Act does not address it adequately, as Bill Andreen discussed just this week.

Meanwhile, in the case of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which are covered by the Clean Water Act, EPA has looked away for years. The problem is acute enough that the Government Accountability Office took EPA to task for sticking its …

Today at 12:30pm the Federal Leadership Committee released, pursuant to President Obama’s Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order, seven draft reports to improve Bay restoration. Each report is about 50 pages, so there’s a lot of information to take in – from strengthening water quality to strengthening storm water management to assessing the impacts of climate change. After a quick look, here are my initial thoughts:

1. EPA Special Advisor Chuck Fox’s diligence and energy is impressive. Not only did he have to navigate EPA’s many layers of bureaucracy, he also coordinated representatives from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Transportation and others to make sure these reports made the Executive Order deadline. He has been – and I think will continue to be – remarkably effective.

2. In contrast to the previous administration, the Obama EPA seems to be serious …

One of the ongoing tensions in environmental law is the conflict between uniformity and flexibility, constancy and change. Many of the environmental successes over the past thirty years derive from uniform standards that are straightforward to administer and enforce. The Clean Water Act’s requirement, for example, that all industrial polluters are obligated to utilize the same end-of-pipe, technology-based pollution controls is responsible for dramatically cleaning up our waters.

There are, of course, still more low-hanging fruit to be addressed under our existing laws, but building upon the environmental gains we have made is also challenge. The remaining problems are often complex, the pollution sources more dispersed, ecosystems change. Developing policies to clean up or prevent a particular mess is one thing, but developing policies that respond to new scientific information and promote ecosystem health more broadly is quite another. Environmental managers, regulators, and policymakers are thus …

Today, the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife is holding a hearing entitled “A Renewed Commitment to Protecting the Chesapeake Bay: Reauthorizing the Chesapeake Bay Program." Here's something that should be on Congress's agenda: making the Bay-wide TMDL (“pollution cap”) enforceable to ensure that it is actually implemented.

First, some background: Congress created the Bay Program in 1983, establishing it under the Clean Water Act. The regional partnership, which now includes several federal agencies in addition to Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New York and the District of Columbia, is world-renowned for the quality of its science and its monitoring capabilities. Yet, although approximately $4 billion has been spent on restoration efforts since 1995, the Chesapeake Bay remains “severely degraded.” While population growth in the region has certainly made Bay restoration efforts more difficult, the critical problem lies …