On Monday, the Environmental Defense Fund announced that it had reached a settlement with Tenaska Inc. to withdraw opposition to that company’s proposed “Trailblazer Energy Center,” a 600 megawatt coal fired power plant in West Texas. In return for dropping its objections, the EDF signed an agreement with Tenaska that the company will sequester 85% of the CO2 it produces, selling much of the gas to companies who will use it for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the West Texas Permian Basin oil field.

The agreement is stunning on many levels. Trailblazer is the first large-scale proposal (and presumably will be the first operational coal fired power plant) to sequester significant amounts of the CO2 it produces. It is also the first large-scale use of enhanced oil recovery as a market for captured CO2. Last, it firmly and finally illustrates the reality of the fate of …

Guest blogger Patrick MacRoy is Director of Community-Based Initiatives and RRP Training Program Manager for the National Center for Healthy Housing. He launched the first “train-the-trainer” program to help increase the supply of accredited RRP training providers and has been working on related policy issues.

Today marks a major milestone in the century-long battle against childhood lead poisoning in the United States: the EPA will be officially implementing the Renovation, Repair, and Painting rule. Known as the RRP rule, the regulation is designed to prevent the contamination of nearly four million homes a year with toxic lead dust created from the disturbance of old lead-based paint during rehab or maintenance work in older homes. Mandated by Congress nearly two decades ago, the rule has long been a source of controversy and will continue to require attention from advocates to ensure it reaches its full potential.

As part …

Earlier this month an Oklahoma jury awarded $7.3 million to current and former poultry growers for fraud, negligence, and violations of a state consumer protection act committed by Tyson Foods, Inc. This verdict is not surprising as Tyson, like other major poultry processors, wields considerable economic clout in its relationship with poultry growers. This imbalanced relationship suggests that the “independent contractor” status of poultry growers that Tyson and other major poultry processors describe is a trick for the companies to disclaim any responsibility for the highly pollutant-concentrated poultry waste, which contaminates waterways around the country.

Like other corporate poultry processors, Tyson relies on a network of poultry growers around the country. The growers enter into a contract with the company, which retains nearly total control of the growers’ poultry operations. Tyson provides the physical materials for the poultry operations—from chicks to feed—and specifies the …

A recent Water Policy Report article reported that EPA is considering dramatic changes to its Clean Water Act enforcement and permitting program and oversight of state permitting programs. Many of the changes under consideration, including prioritizing the most significant pollution problems, strengthening oversight of states, and improving transparency and accountability, are long overdue. Passed in 1972, the CWA contains much of the authority needed to clean up water pollution from point sources and certain other sources, but strong enforcement is the key to ensuring the Act’s goals are achieved.

EPA has long applied deterrence-based enforcement, which is based on the idea that regulated entities weigh the cost and benefits of complying with regulations. If the costs of complying with the law are lower than the costs of violating it, a rational regulated entity will comply with the law, goes the theory. If, however, the size of …

In “Minding the Climate Gap: What’s at Stake if California’s Climate Law Isn’t Done Right and Right Away,” released Wednesday, researchers from several California universities have correlated the relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and associated co-pollutants in several California industries. The results demonstrate that California’s climate law, AB 32, enacted in 2006, could help reduce not just carbon dioxide emissions, but a variety of co-pollutants that have contributed to the state’s persistent pollution. At the same time, the study demonstrates that if the state chooses to implement an unfettered GHG trading program, that program could continue or worsen existing racial disparities in pollution. The study proposes several carefully tailored policies that would maximize a cap-and-trade program’s benefits to public health and help narrow current inequities. The proposals, tailored to California’s emerging cap-and-trade program, could provide a model for federal …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

When I sat down to write this blog posting, I started by going through my environmental law casebook and noting down the cases in which Justice Stevens had written the majority opinion or a major dissent.   When I got done, I was startled by the central role Justice Stevens had played in creating modern environmental law.

I’ll explain that central role in a minute, but first, why I was startled?  Two reasons.  First, Justice Stevens still retains some of the “brilliant maverick” reputation that he gained in his first year on the Court.  That is, someone with a lot of sharp insights but no overall theme.  Second, so far as I know, he has no particular passion for environmental law as such.  His life before he became a judge never included environmental law, and so far as I know he has no …

In preparing CPR’s recent white paper, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short, we conducted interviews with sixteen stakeholders across Maryland to assess MDE’s enforcement program as it operates on the ground. Collectively the stakeholders have decades of experience with enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as from environmental and industry perspectives. A full summary of the interviews can be found in the report, but a handful of surprising comments stood out. Comments on four areas stood out to me:

Maryland's Enforcement Compared With Other States. While Maryland prides itself on a strong environmental reputation, some interviewees tempered this pride. One environmental interviewee described MDE’s enforcement program as “middle of the pack – slightly under par,” while an official evaluated the program more positively, noting the “considerably higher” number of violations flagged for formal enforcement actions …

CPR President Rena Steinzor (former director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic) and Robert Kuehn, president of the Clinical Legal Education Association, have a post over at ACSBlog putting the recent attack on the independence of the Maryland clinic into the context of other such moves across the country.

The Maryland legislature recently stepped back from an earlier threat to withhold funding to the clinic if it did not turn over private client information to the state. The issue came up when the clinic represented two advocacy groups suing chicken farmers over alleged pollution violations, leading to a backlash from the industry and its supporters (see Shana Jones’ earlier post).

Steinzor and Kuehn put the Maryland incident in the context of a “rising tide of attacks on law school clinics by those powerful interests affronted by law clinic opponents' access to pro bono assistance …

Today CPR releases a new report, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short. The report, which CPR Member Scholar Robert Glicksman and I co-authored, details the results of an investigation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) enforcement program at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE). CPR provided a copy of this report to MDE, and its response (and CPR’s follow-up) is included as an appendix to the report.

Overall, we found that state of Maryland is failing to enforce existing water pollution laws, allowing illegal pollution that damages Maryland waters and the Chesapeake Bay. The report focuses on three specific areas:

• Funding. MDE is drastically underfunded and is being tasked with greater responsibility despite overall decreases in funding. Between 2000 and 2009, the budget for the Water Management Administration (WMA) at MDE declined nearly 25 percent while the number of permits …