The AP reports:

A federal judge presiding over hundreds of lawsuits against Chinese drywall makers and installers said Thursday that he plans to hold the first trial in January for the cases, which claim the imported products emit sulfur, methane and other chemical compounds that have ruined homes and harmed residents' health.

U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon told attorneys that he expects them to pick six plaintiffs whose cases could be tried in early 2010, with the first trial starting in January.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, in its August drywall update, reported that new complaints continue to come in, and "the majority of the reports continue to be from Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia." And:

To date, CPSC staff has confirmed 6,211,200 sheets of Chinese drywall were imported into the U.S., plus 28,778 sheets imported into Guam, Saipan, and American Samoa during …

This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.

We had a flurry of posts on geoengineering a while back (see here, here, here, and here). If you want to learn more about geoengineering, a great resource is this report, just issued by the Royal Society. It clearly explains the background, the approaches being proposed (which divide broadly into technologies for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and technologies for reducing the input of solar radiation), and the risks associated with those approaches. The key conclusions include: (1) geoengineering is not a substitute for reducing GHG emissions; (2) more research should be done on geoengineering and dealing with its risks, in case “it becomes necessary to reduce the rate of warming this century”: (3) because of the risks, “Solar Radiation Management methods should not be applied unless there is a need to rapidly limit or reduce global average …

Those of us worried sick over climate change confronted a depressing piece of excellent reporting in Monday's Washington Post. Environment reporter David Fahrenthold wrote that environmental organizations are getting their proverbial clocks cleaned by a well-organized and pervasive campaign mounted by affected industries in small and mid-size communities throughout America. “It seems that environmentalists are struggling in a fight they have spent years setting up,” Fahrenthold wrote. “Even now, these groups differ on whether to scare the public with predictions of heat waves or woo it with promises of green jobs.”

If scaring the public is the objective, environmentalists don’t have to look very far for hard facts to support the effort. All they really need to do is focus on what the world’s most prominent and reputable scientists keep trying to tell us about the dismal state of the environment that we’re …

A recent article on Forbes.com, "China: Where Poisoning People Is Almost Free," gave great examples of just how cheap it often is to pollute in China. And it pointed to potential consequences:

While companies can get away with pollution atrocities for years, the Chinese government, in the long run, may have to pay a high price for allowing it: political instability triggered by the unanswered grievances of pollution victims.

Manufacturers, of course, can and have moved overseas to countries -- China being a major destination -- with light pollution controls.

So if poisoning people in China is 'almost free,' what about here? There are costs to upgrading plant technologies to meet regulations, and costs for the pollution permits themselves, for example. And it's a good thing we have the environmental laws and regulations we do.

But what if you're a non-point source of pollution? Say, the …

Earlier this month, EPA released for public comment a new white paper on probabilistic risk assessment, marking the Obama Administration’s first major foray into the contentious debate about EPA's evolving risk assessment methods. Back in May, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced changes to the way the Office of Research and Development (ORD) will update risk assessments for the IRIS database, but that announcement was made without any real public input and it only implicated the inner workings of one program office (albeit an important one). The public comment period on the new white paper presents the first opportunity for the various stakeholders who usually weigh in on EPA’s risk assessment policies to have some say in the new administration’s policies.

The new white paper, Using Probabilistic Methods to Enhance the Role of Risk Analysis in Decision Making, focuses on one of the fundamental …

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to set specific, statewide numeric standards for nutrient pollution in Florida, marking the first time the EPA has forced numeric limits for nutrient runoff for an entire state. This settlement, based on a 1998 EPA determination that under the Clean Water Act all states were required to develop numeric standards for nutrient pollution, has implications for the thousands of impaired rivers, lakes, and estuaries across the United States.

Under the Clean Water Act, states are required to establish water quality standards that consist of two components: a designated use and water quality criteria. The designated use identifies for what purposes the water body will be used, such as drinking water, recreational, or industrial use. Water quality criteria measures the chemical, biological, nutrient, and sediment composition of a water body and requires their levels to support the designated use. The CWA …

In July, a federal judge settled a nearly 20-year legal dispute among Alabama, Florida, and Georgia over the use of water from Lake Lanier, dealing a tough blow to Georgia. The Army Corps of Engineers constructed Buford Dam in the 1950s, creating Lake Lanier as a reservoir for flood control, navigation, and hydropower. But Atlanta and its sprawling metropolitan area came to rely on the reservoir as a water supply, and Lake Lanier today supplies water to 75 percent of the city. In 1990, Alabama and Florida filed suit against the Corps and Georgia to stop Atlanta’s use of the reservoir.

The 97-page order from Paul Magnuson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida is clear: Atlanta’s use of water from Lake Lanier as a municipal water supply is illegal and inconsistent with the original purposes of the lake. Georgia …

Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.

As reported in the L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has petitioned EPA to hold a trial-type hearing before finalizing its proposed finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. (We blogged about the proposed endangerment finding here.)

The main argument in the petition is that a formal hearing is required to effectuate the administration’s stated commitment to scientific integrity and transparency. Don’t be fooled. Scientific integrity is nowhere near the top of the Chamber’s wish list. Chamber officials have made that clear by telling the L.A. Times that the proceeding they have in mind would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.” Scopes was convicted in 1925 of violating Tennessee’s law against teaching evolution in the public schools. His trial was a media circus …

As fellow environmental law professors David Schoenbrod and Richard Stewart take their advocacy for market mechanisms and skepticism about regulation public, with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, I thought it was time to speak out in favor of a role for regulation. They claim that the climate change bill that passed the House in July, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the Waxman-Markey bill), relies too much on “top-down” regulation and not enough on pure market mechanisms. Regulations, in their view, are bureaucratic, inefficient, and politically motivated to favor key industrial constituencies. Market mechanisms would be more efficient and effective, they say, because once an emissions cap is set, industry and consumers would make their own rational emissions reduction decisions.

Ideological claims that “markets work” and “regulations don’t work” miss the point. Schoenbrod and Stewart identify failed regulations and …