Climate Change Threatens Communities with Dangerous Spills and Contamination from Nearby Industrial Facilities
To date, climate adaptation and resilience planning efforts on the local, state, and federal levels have largely focused on protecting residential, commercial, and municipal infrastructure from sea level rise and deadly storm surge through such structural practices as shoreline armoring. However, a growing number of advocates are raising concerns about the threat that extreme weather poses to the low-income communities and communities of color that are disproportionately situated near industrial facilities vulnerable to flooding.
Industrial facilities – oil and gas, manufacturing, chemical, and agricultural – are often sited within floodplains to permit access to water for transport and industrial process and are ill-equipped to prevent hazardous material spills and leaks caused by extreme precipitation, flooding, and storm surge. As a result, neighboring communities are at particular risk of exposure to these dangerous substances during and following extreme weather events. Community members and first responders face not only the immediate risk of contact but also chronic exposure once contaminated floodwaters recede and leave an invisible toxic residue in homes, water systems, schools, open spaces, and wherever floodwaters invaded.
Last month, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit against ExxonMobil that seeks to prevent future uncontrolled discharges caused by climate change …
Today, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) is releasing an assessment of the plans and progress of Baltimore City and the nine largest counties in Maryland to comply with their federal stormwater permits, a key component of the ongoing effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and restore it to health. The analysis looks carefully at the jurisdictions' past efforts and future plans, revealing a wide range in the apparent commitment and level of restoration activity as they work to restore their urban and suburban environments and address polluted runoff from impervious surfaces like roads and parking lots.
Several jurisdictions like Montgomery and Prince George's counties have a long history of innovative stormwater management work and submitted relatively strong plans. Other jurisdictions, however, did not produce plans that meet their legal obligations to identify enough stormwater projects to satisfy their permits. Some jurisdictions, like Frederick and Harford …
NEWS RELEASE: Center for Progressive Reform Welcomes New Climate Adaptation Policy Analyst
Today, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) announced that David Flores has joined the organization as its new policy analyst. Flores will serve alongside the group's staff and Member Scholars in their efforts to protect public health and the environment, with a particular focus on ways communities and the Chesapeake Bay region can adapt to climate change in a fair, just, inclusive manner.
"I'm excited to welcome David Flores to our team," said Matthew Shudtz, executive director of CPR. "CPR is embarking on several new, exciting projects related to climate change and adaptation strategies, and David has a keen sense of how CPR can succeed in this crucial area of work. He's a smart analyst and a strategic advocate – the perfect person to work alongside our Member Scholars and our allies to …
Larry Hogan promised to be the "best environmental governor that's ever served" in Maryland. But three recent policy developments call that claim into question.
Earlier this year, the Hogan administration vetoed the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which would have raised Maryland's renewable energy portfolio standard – the share of electricity that energy providers must derive from renewable sources – from 20 percent by 2022 to 25 percent by 2020. A stronger commitment to renewable energy could have had a tremendous effect on the state economy, attracting clean energy providers and other environmentally conscious companies. Moreover, according to the Maryland Department of Legislative Services, the act would have raised monthly utility bills by only $1 to $2.
With the veto, the governor declined to increase the renewable energy goal and shorten the time period for achieving it, despite being in a position to do so. Instead, he threw …
Next Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear four hours of argument over the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Federalism-linked statutory, regulatory, and doctrinal law has been and will be crucial to the CPP's fate, and several issues of federalism will play a key role.
In designing the CPP, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency built on states' actions in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in recent years through use of GHG trading regimes, and nudging or requiring power plants to produce energy through cleaner or renewable sources. The CPP's core requirements – capped pollution targets for each state – are built on EPA's assessment of what "best systems of emission reduction" have been "adequately demonstrated," and derives the targets from that assessment.
States were able to make such progress during recent decades due both to their longstanding powers to …
The Chesapeake Bay watershed and its restoration framework under the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) are so large and complex that it can be a real challenge to study, much less write about, the problem and the ongoing restoration efforts. This is why the recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessment of the tiny Beck Creek watershed in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania is so valuable. The same activities that have fouled Beck Creek and the restoration practices that are working to revive it are the same problems and solutions familiar to all of us who study the Chesapeake Bay.
The biggest contributing source of nitrogen pollution in the Bay watershed is agriculture, and Pennsylvania sends the most nitrogen pollution into the Bay of any state in the region. Because of this, the small, agriculture-dominated watershed surrounding Beck Creek is literally the epicenter of the problem, making …
California's recent climate legislation is noteworthy not only for its toughest-in-the-nation carbon reduction goals – 40 percent below 1990 emissions by 2030 – but also for continuing the state's tradition of linking climate and environmental justice goals. AB 197, which accompanied a carbon reduction bill known as SB 32, prioritizes direct emission reductions likely to improve air quality; increases public access to information about carbon, conventional, and toxic emissions; and establishes a new cross-cutting legislative oversight committee to systematically monitor California's multi-faceted climate programs.
The environmental justice movement has long recognized the connection between climate policies and environmental justice. Advocates have supported stringent carbon reduction targets because poor and marginalized communities are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts like heat waves, drought, and economic disruptions to agriculture and tourism.
Climate policies also have important implications for the traditional pollutants that pose the most immediate threats …
Every year, Thomson Reuters and West Publishing compile a set of significant and influential articles from a number of legal scholars who focus on land use and environmental law. The Land Use & Environment Law Review represents some of the best scholarship on these issues, and peer reviewers recently included five pieces on environmental law published in 2014 and 2015.
Among the selected articles are two from CPR Member Scholar Hannah Wiseman, Professor at Florida State University College of Law, and one from Member Scholar Alejandro Camacho, Professor at the UC-Irvine School of Law.
The reviewers also designated a longer list of authors and articles as finalists, and CPR Member Scholars were well represented. Robin Kundis Craig, Daniel Farber, Robert Glicksman, Dave Owen, Amy Sinden, and Wendy Wagner all had articles included on the finalist list.
You can find both lists and links to the scholars' articles …
The Clean Power Plan has been widely touted as significant because it regulates the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States – the electric power industry. Its significance, however, goes beyond U.S. CO2 emissions because it serves as the linchpin of international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in order to avoid dangerous climate disruption. The rule gave the Obama administration sufficient credibility to persuade the Chinese to pledge limits on their own greenhouse gas emissions for the first time and paved the way for worldwide pledges of significant emission reductions at the Paris Conference last December. If the U.S. fails to promptly implement this rule because of an unfavorable judicial ruling, the Paris agreement could unravel, as developing countries do not consider it equitable to demand reductions from them without significant reductions by the United States and other wealthy countries …
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Clean Power Plan (CPP) relies, in part, on a pollution reduction strategy – generation shifting – that is at issue in the ongoing lawsuit over the rule. Generation shifting involves increasing use of relatively clean natural gas and renewable energy and reducing use of relatively dirty and expensive coal-fired power plants. Although the technique has lowered power plant emissions significantly in recent years, opponents of the CPP have argued in legal briefs that section 111 of the Clean Air Act precludes relying on generation shifting to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They claim the technique somehow does not lead to reductions at a pollution source, but their argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Generation shifting does reduce emissions at each pollution source that takes advantage of the technique and therefore passes muster.
Some explanation of section 111 and the CPP …
