Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled in Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council that the United States EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers could interpret the Clean Water Act to exempt water pollution sources from pollution control requirements if the pollution was accompanied by fill material.

This legal feat was accomplished because the Clean Water Act divides jurisdiction between the Corps for “fill” material and the EPA for pollutants. This division ostensibly gives each agency control of its own area of expertise, the Corps dredging and filling and the EPA pollutants that could harm human health or the environment generally. The problem comes when, as in this case, “fill” material contains significant amounts of pollution. Who then should regulate? I believe a straightforward reading of the intent of the legislation indicates that generally the Corps should only regulate fill that might contain de minimis amounts …

Andrew Freedman of washingtonpost.com's Capital Weather Gang has a nifty catch: the Heartland Institute, the people cluttering up my newspaper this week with climate-change-denying ads, have officially changed tack on their lobbying policy. Back in March, the group told Freedman:

"Our purpose is to bring scientists, economists, and policy experts together to address issues overlooked or ignored by the IPCC the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .... If we really wanted to influence policy we would have held the event in Washington, not New York - as many of the policy wonks at the conference have urged us to do, but we resist."

But the group ended up holding its conference in Washington this month. Now they tell Freedman:

"The reason we moved up the date, changed the location, and presented a shorter schedule ... was to bring our message to elected officials in Washington D …

The Waxman-Markey bill, in its current form, continues the nation’s wise respect for the complementary roles of the federal government and the states. By establishing a national cap and a national trading program, the bill would draw all states into the essential task of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But, like the federal environmental laws before it, the bill simultaneously provides states with the power to achieve more stringent reductions. Although industry may resist the prospect of state control, Congress should maintain the balance between federal and state power the bill has established.

The Clean Air Act, which the bill amends, already allows states to set more stringent regulatory standards for facilities in their states. In a national cap-and-trade program, however, that power could be rendered meaningless due to the interconnections among the states created by a national trading system. For example, if a state were …

The Congressional Budget Office recently issued its report on the Waxman-Markey bill. The Washington Times soon trumpeted: “CBO puts hefty price tag on emissions plan: Obama's cap-and-trade system seen costing $846 billion.”

This is quite misleading. Actually, the CBO report tells us virtually nothing about the economic costs of the bill or how much consumers will lose out of pocket. In fact, the way most people understand the idea of a budget deficit, it doesn’t really say much about that either. CBO’s analysis is based on some very technical accounting that may can easily be misinterpreted. In particular, CBO treats the issuance of free carbon allowances quite differently than most people would expect.

CBO’s job is to project the bill’s effect on the federal budget. Here’s the bottom line from the report, which is what the Washington Times story was reflecting …

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a terrific piece by Matt Bai on the Obama White House and how it is “taking” Capitol Hill, one battle at a time. After extolling the team of congressional insiders Obama has assembled, and emphasizing the importance of their attentiveness to key players on the issue du jour -- health care reform -- Bai predicts that Obama will be compelled to wade up to his neck in the messy details of the legislation because only his personal power will be enough to guide this behemoth through. This prediction, which has already begun to come true -- note the stories last week saying he’d be willing to consider taxing benefits -- could spell disaster for a different issue: climate change legislation.

Allow me to pause for just a moment, in fairness to the Obama team, to lament congressional gridlock, which has yet …

This week, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on the problem of waste pharmaceuticals ending up in the nation’s waterways. The issue sounds trivial – does Congress really need to spend its time worrying about people with a few left-over prescription pills flushing them down the toilet? The answer is yes. The cumulative volume of pharmaceuticals flowing from America’s bathrooms (and hospitals and landfills) to our rivers and lakes is significant, and even low levels can harm fish and wildlife. As a result, the environmental impacts of careless drug disposal are serious.

Some pharmaceuticals, known as endocrine disruptors, mimic female hormones in fish, “feminizing” male fish and interfering with reproduction. Even if only one species in a waterway is directly affected, the loss can propagate through the food chain – if the fish that feed predators disappear, the predators tend to …

This afternoon, Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC), Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, will hold a hearing on recent revisions to the IRIS assessment process. IRIS (the Integrated Risk Information System) is EPA’s premier database of toxicological profiles for dangerous chemicals. The profiles are used for everything from setting cleanup standards at Superfund sites to determining liability in toxic tort suits. The problem is, IRIS only contains profiles for 548 chemicals. On average, 700 new chemicals enter commerce each year. Because IRIS numbers can serve as a cornerstone in the risk assessment/risk management process, an extensive database would greatly benefit policymakers in their daily work to protect public health.

We wanted to see whether some well-known toxins are adequately covered in the IRIS database, so we looked at the number of hazardous air pollutants that are listed in the Clean …

This afternoon, Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC), Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, will hold a

on recent revisions to the IRIS assessment process.

(the Integrated Risk Information System) is EPA’s premier database of toxicological profiles for dangerous chemicals. The profiles are used for everything from setting cleanup standards at Superfund sites to determining liability in toxic tort suits. The problem is, IRIS only contains profiles for 548 chemicals. On average, 700 new chemicals enter commerce each year. Because IRIS numbers can serve as a cornerstone in the risk assessment/risk management process, an extensive database would greatly benefit policymakers in their daily work to protect public health.

We wanted to see whether some well-known toxins are adequately covered in the IRIS database, so we looked at the number of hazardous air pollutants that are listed in the Clean …

Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.

In a decision that shows the power of Chevron deference, Friends of the Everglades v. South Florida Water Management District, the 11th Circuit has upheld EPA’s water transfers rule, which provides that the act of moving water from one waterway to another does not require a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit under the Clean Water Act. The question of whether water transfers are subject to CWA permitting has been litigated several places, but most fiercely in the Everglades, where the Corps of Engineers’ Central and South Florida Project moves lots of water, containing lots of pollutants, in directions it would not otherwise go.

The CWA requires a permit for “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” The question in the Everglades cases is whether the transfer of polluted water from one waterway to another …