Downwind States Deserve Protection: Supreme Court's Review of Decision Gutting Cross-State Pollution Protections Right on Point
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, or review of EME Homer City Generation v. EPA, 696 F.3d 7 (D.C. Cir. 2012), reh’g en banc denied, 2013 WL 656247 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 24, 2013). This is a welcome development, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals got many things wrong in its tossing out of the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSPAR), the follow-up to the previously invalidated Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) which regulated potential cross-state air pollution. For example, although an oil refinery one state may meet its own air quality, but not in state nearby where it might be polluting neighboring cities. CSPAR would hold states accountable for their pollution of their neighbors, which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out last year.
This case was brought to the D.C. Circuit on consolidated challenges to the EPA’s attempt to implement the CSPAR. Basically, the rule and its pieces and subsidiaries were designed to ensure that the states did not cause significant “interference” with “maintenance” of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) in downwind states. (This has also been referred to as the “good neighbor provision,” or …
When you say “small business,” most people probably imagine a mom-and-pop corner grocery. Actually, the federal Small Business Administration’s concept of small goes well beyond that. For instance, it includes a computer business that does up to $25 million per year in business. A convenience store can do $27 million and still be considered “small,” while a grocery store can go up to $30 million. If you’re in parts of the financial sector, you can do $175 million in business a year and still be a “small business.”
In many other areas, the size requirement is set in terms of numbers of employees—usually 500, but sometimes 1000 or more. There are wonderfully detailed sub-categories such as “Motor Vehicle Steering and Suspension Components (except Spring) Manufacturing” and the nostalgia-inducing “Carbon Paper and Inked Ribbon Manufacturing.” (Couldn’t find a heading for buggy-whip manufacturers, however.) Anyway …
The Senate's confirmation of Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a welcome development and a signal that Congress and the President are willing to get serious about the Agency's role in protecting the health of all Americans and the affects of climate change on the environment. It won't be easy. Lawmakers seem divided on nearly every issue in this debate. In the past EPA's efforts to protect the environment and public health and safety have sometimes been delayed by the White House's own Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Cutting through such bureaucracy should be on the short list of the new administrator's priorities. Climate change knows no political ideology and it follows its own timeline. Administrator McCarthy is well equipped to meet the challenges we face. We are lucky to have her fighting for us …
One day in May, climate change got a lot more expensive. The price tag on emissions – the value of the damages done by one more ton of CO2 in the air – used to be a mere $25 or so, in today’s dollars, according to an anonymous government task force that met in secret in 2009-2010. Now it’s $40, according to an anonymous government task force that met in secret in early 2013.
Anyone who cares about combating climate change would have to applaud the result: a higher carbon price means that cost-benefit analyses will place a greater value on policies that reduce emissions.
And anyone who cares about democracy should be appalled at the process: are we entering an era in which major regulatory decisions are made anonymously, in secret, with no opportunity for review?
The work of the anonymous task force is a …
Last week brought big news in the water quality world. On July 10, American Rivers, the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and several other environmental groups filed “residual designation authority” petitions for stormwater discharges across EPA Regions 1 (New England), 3 (mid-Atlantic), and 9 (southwestern states and California). That may sound like an obscure and technical act, but here’s why it’s actually a very big deal.
For years, urban stormwater runoff has been one of the United States’ greatest unsolved water quality challenges. Urban runoff is second only to agricultural runoff as a source of water quality impairment, and on a per-acre basis, urban development is generally more damaging to water quality than agricultural use. But EPA has struggled to regulate urban stormwater runoff. For years, EPA barely regulated urban stormwater runoff at all. The 1987 Clean Water Act amendments compelled EPA …
The 2013 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), as adopted by the Senate on May 13, S.601, would authorize $12 billion in federal spending on flood protection, dam and levee projects, and port improvements. A new version of WRDA is passed every few years, and it is the primary vehicle for authorizing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ water projects and for implementing changes with respect to the Corps’ water resource policies.
S.601 contains several notable provisions, not the least of which is the so-called “States’ Water Rights Act” Amendment. This amendment would bar the Corps from charging a storage fee for “surplus water” drawn from Missouri River reservoirs. For the purposes of Section 6 of the 1944 Flood Control Act, which governs Missouri River operations, “surplus water” is defined as water stored in a Corps of Engineers reservoir that is not required because the congressionally …
The impacts of climate change do not fall equally. That is obvious on a global level, where low-lying countries, like Bangladesh and small island states, face inundation, while poor equatorial countries face devastating heat and droughts. It is less obvious, but still true, in the United States, where poor and marginalized communities without sufficient financial and social resources will face significant challenges adapting to the changing climate. While catastrophes appear to affect everyone equally, they are much harder on those who lack the resources to prepare and to cope.
So writes Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Alice Kaswan in the latest CPR Issue Alert, an executive summary of two recent articles: “Seven Principles for Equitable Adaptation, published in the latest edition of Sustainable Development Law & Policy, and "Domestic Climate Change Adaptation and Equity," a more in-depth analysis published in the Environmental Law Reporter in December …
Reposted from Environmental Law Prof Blog.
A standard environmental history of American dams unfolds something like this: As a nation, we had a long love affair with dams. And while
they helped our nation grow into an industrial power, the environmental side-effects were immense: lost forests and farmland, drowned canyons, and, perhaps most importantly, devastated fisheries. Yet even after some of those consequences became apparent, the story goes, dam-building marched on, powered by bureaucratic inertia and the seemingly unstoppable engine of pork-barrel politics. Finally, in the 1980s, we stopped, but by then we had built approximately one dam for every day of our national existence. As former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt once put it, “we overdosed.” We’re now starting to take dams out, and those dam removals often lead to dramatic environmental improvements. But, in the standard narrative, the removals aren’t coming nearly …
Reposted from LegalPlanet.
People on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the boundaries of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act are murky, to say the least. But efforts by EPA and the Corps of Engineers to clarify those boundaries have been tied up in the White House for more than a year, with no explanation and to no apparent useful purpose. The President is fond of telling that nation that it should place more trust in government. No wonder he’s not convincing his political opponents — he doesn’t appear to believe the message himself. The White House Office of Management and Budget has become a black hole not just for new regulations, but even for attempts to clarify existing law. It simply swallows proposals, leaving them forever in limbo, and forever subject to continued politicking. The Clean Water Act jurisdiction guidance surely isn …
