Water Buffaloes Ready to Charge... Over the Rain?
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times described the latest absurdity in the never-ending search to quench the thirst for water: ownership of rainwater and, more precisely, the illegality of rainwater harvesting. Residents and communities in parts of Colorado are turning to this ancient practice of collecting and storing rain to fulfill their domestic water needs, including flushing toilets and watering lawns. Using this “grey” water, as it is called, relieves pressure on water resources and can be extremely efficient.
Many long-time water users, however, object to the practice.
These so-called water buffaloes argue that people who collect rainwater are taking away from their water by collecting the water before it has a chance to flow into a river from which they obtain water. Effectively, they argue, the rainwater belongs to them – they own the rain that falls from the sky as part of their water allocation, even though 97 percent of the rainfall that falls on soil does not reach a river. The bad news? The law in Colorado stands behind those water buffaloes.
Like most states west of the one-hundredth meridian, Colorado follows the doctrine of prior appropriation to allocate water. For all water uses that are …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a "discussion draft" of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world's most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by William Buzbee, examines if the bill would preempt state laws.
In the Waxman-Markey bill, as in any proposed federal legislation, a key question concerns the ongoing role of the states. States have long played positive, cooperative and often innovative roles in working to accomplish environmental goals. But state activism is not met with universal applause. In the climate change area, as in other environmental law areas, one of the motivations for …
The large earthquake that struck central Italy on Monday is devastating not only for the immense human suffering—people killed and injured, and communities disrupted—but also for the priceless losses of Italian cultural heritage. The Italian Ministry of culture has reported that the earthquake damaged a number of buildings of immeasurable historical significance, including the Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio—the site of a papal coronation in 1294—and an archway built in the 16th century to honor Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Unfortunately, historical sites throughout the world are suffering from similar irreparable damage. The difference: this damage is the result of the effects of global climate change, which, unlike earthquakes and other natural disasters, is traceable to human causes and is therefore preventable.
Historians, archeologists, and anthropologists around the world report that with each passing day the effects of global climate change are …
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.
EPA is finally flexing its muscle on mountaintop removal mining, taking on the Corps of Engineers and stepping in for states that have been reluctant to attack the practice.
Mountaintop removal mining involves blasting the tops off of mountains, typically in Appalachia, to get at coal. The ecological problems are less about removal of the mountaintops than about the filling of valley streams with the excess spoils. The practice has been going on for more than 20 years with very little regulatory oversight and in apparent disregard of the Clean Water Act.
In 2002, the Bush administration gave the valley fills associated with mountaintop removal mining a semblance of legality by revising the regulations governing the issuance of permits for filling waters of the U.S. under section 404 of the Act to allow filling with overburden from …
The Bush Administration earned its reputation for being contemptuous of science. From suppressing an EPA global warming report so as not to put the federal government’s imprimatur on the scientific consensus that climate change was real and human-caused, to simply refusing to open an email containing formal scientific findings inconvenient to its policy objectives, the Bush crowd took manipulation of science to previously unknown extremes. But as CPR President Rena Steinzor points out, the Bush Administration didn’t invent the practice. Science and scientists have been under political pressure from a variety of sources and in a variety of ways for quite some time now.
That’s why the departure of the Bush political appointees who did the most egregious manipulating does not alone solve all the problems. In a letter sent today to John Holdren, the President’s top science advisor, Center for Progressive Reform …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. Their detailed responses are posted individually on CPRBblog, but here are some highlights:
Citizen Suits. Member Scholar Nina Mendelson applauds the bill’s provisions on citizen enforcement suits. She writes, “Environmental statutes traditionally provide for citizen enforcement suits as a critical supplement to governmental enforcement, especially in a world of limited budgets…. Supreme Court decisions have, however, created uncertainty regarding when and which citizens can bring such suits to protect the environment, particularly in …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Alice Kaswan, examines several issues in the bill, including the issue of co-pollutants (non-greenhouse gas, but nevertheless polluting, emissions), the need for state-federal partnership on transportation and land-use issues related to climate change, and the bill’s provision removing greenhouse gas emissions from EPA’s jurisdiction under the Clean Air Act but apparently allowing states to impose their own clean air requirements in some areas.
Representatives Waxman and Markey’s “discussion …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Victor Flatt, looks at the offsets for carbon emissions that would be permitted under the measure.
The Waxman-Markey draft bill treads some familiar ground with respect to the use of offsets to meet greenhouse gas reduction requirements, but also introduces some new innovations. In departing from other drafts and bills, the offsets provision may be most controversial in its limited examination of the environmental effects of offsets, and its use of …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Kirsten Engel, looks at how the bill’s cap-and-trade provisions would affect existing state and regional efforts – the “preemption” issue.
Perhaps one of the most-watched issues regarding federal climate legislation is how a cap-and-trade program established by such legislation would mesh with the existing and soon-to-be established state and regional greenhouse gas emission cap-and-trade programs. Currently, the United States has one regional cap-and-trade program up and running – the Regional Greenhouse Gas …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Nina Mendelson, looks at what the bill would do to reassert the right of citizens to bring suit – either against polluters or against recalcitrant regulators – to enforce the law’s provisions.
By setting solid targets for reducing global warming in a cap-and-trade system and including a host of other helpful provisions, the Waxman-Markey bill is a terrific first contribution to this Congress’s debate on climate change. A less obvious but …
