Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar will leave a decidedly mixed legacy from his four years at the helm of the federal department responsible for protecting many of America’s vast open spaces, treasured parks, and disappearing wildlife. 

Salazar’s Interior Department enjoyed some high-profile successes and on occasion took action to better protect important resources. It reached a multi-billion dollar settlement in the long-running and contentious Cobell litigation, a massive class action suit by Indian tribal members over government mismanagement of revenue from tribal resources. The Department under Salazar established seven new national parks and 10 new wildlife refuges.

But in many areas, while Interior took steps to respond to crises and restore some of the protections for land and wildlife that had languished for nearly a decade, it missed important opportunities to keep pace with twenty-first century threats to natural resources.

Salazar’s record on oil …

Cross-posted from Environmental Law Prof Blog.

Last week, a federal district court in Virginia decided an urban stormwater case that may ultimately have far more significance than the Supreme Court’s more widely-watched decision in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council.  The case is Virginia Department of Transportation v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and it involves a challenge to a proxy TMDL for Accotink Creek, a Potomac River tributary in northern Virginia.  On its face, that statement may not sound particularly intriguing or important, but it is, and a little background is in order.

Section 303 of the Clean Water Act requires states to identify waterways that do not meet water quality standards, and to develop “total maximum daily loads,” or TMDLS, for those waterways.  In essence, TMDLs are pollution budgets.  They usually identify which pollutants are causing impairment, and they …

The Supreme Court ruled today that the 9th Circuit committed a legal error in holding the Los Angeles County Flood Control District liable for violations of its Clean Water Act (CWA) “municipal separate storm sewer system” (or MS4) pollution discharge permit. The suit, Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council, had been initiated by NRDC and allied environmental groups, and its victory below was reversed.   A loss for the environment? Actually, the careful and narrow Supreme Court ruling dodged a potential weakening of the CWA, and appears to have left open for consideration whether conceded permit violations by the Los Angeles County District meant it deserved to be held liable. The case potentially could have weakened the centrality of self-reported discharge permit violations and decades of rulings that such violations result in strict liability. The Court, however, dodged such a result, explicitly leaving …

The Ganges River begins at the foot of the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas and culminates at the Sundarbans Delta, a massive sprawl of swamps, lakes, and scores of islands. (Find an earlier post on the Ganges here.) It’s the largest river delta in the world—home to endangered Bengal tigers, miles of mangroves, and nearly 12 million people (4.5 million on the Indian side and 7.5 million on the Bangladeshi side).

A student of the Mississippi River Delta, I had long wanted to visit the Sundarban Islands. So after giving a series of lectures in Kolkata, I accepted an invitation to visit some of the islands on a medical boat, operated by the Southern Health Improvement Samity, an organization in West Bengal that delivers health-care services to island villagers.

The experience was one of the high points of my semester sabbatical, which has …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

Six months ago, the D.C. Circuit upheld EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, triggering coverage under the Clean Air Act.  On Thursday, the full court denied rehearing to the three-judge panel’s decision.  There were only two dissents, which obviously were hoping to set the stage for a cert. petition to the Supreme Court.  The dissents provide a preview of the kinds of arguments that will be made to the Supreme Court.

One key point is that neither dissent questioned the scientific basis for EPA’s finding.  It is clear that the climate skeptic positions advanced by the state of Texas have no traction even with very conservative judges.

The strongest arguments raised by the dissents involve a technical statutory issue.  The case involves provisions of the Clean Air Act that apply to “any air pollutant.”  The …

In October, I wrote about the city of Surat, the diamond-polishing capital of India, and its battle against climate change.  Recently I had the chance to visit another municipality working on adaptation, a place known more for its postage stamp farms and wandering livestock than jewelry and textiles. It’s called Gorakhpur, and is located in the flood-prone state of Uttar Pradesh, near the India-Nepal border.

I first visited Gorakhpur nearly 25 years ago--when I was a long-haired backpacker and Gorakhpur was a muddy stop on the way to Kathmandu. Some things there haven’t changed. The streets are still muddy. Tea stalls and tarpaulin tents still line the streets, illuminated by the blue flames of cook stoves. At my business hotel, electricity was as unreliable as ever, and the telephones still crackled and hissed. Each morning, I would greet a dozen or so cows grazing on …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco has announced that she will leave her post at the end of February. Her letter to NOAA employees, reprinted in the Washington Post, cites the difficulty of maintaining a bi-coastal family life. Dr. Lubchenco, a distinguished marine biologist, has put in four years at the helm of NOAA, as much time as reasonably could be expected.

She was one of President Obama’s earliest nominees, named before his inauguration as part of a “dream team” of distinguished research scientists he brought into high-level government service in partial fulfillment of his inaugural promise to restore science to its rightful place. While that promise remains, in my view, unfulfilled, it hasn’t been for lack of trying on Lubchenco’s part. Of NOAA’s accomplishments during her tenure, the one I attribute most directly to her influence is adoption of a …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

Mayan apocalypse: panic spreads as December 21 nears

Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth.

That’s from a British newspaper, the Telegraph, but you only have to Google “Mayan Calendar” to find lots of similar items. There seems to be no basis at all for the idea that the Mayans thought the world would end at this point, let alone that it actually will. But it’s certainly gotten people excited.

Ironically, people seem to be much less excited about climate change. That’s ironic for two reasons. First, it’s at least conceivable that the climate will hit a tipping point with catastrophic (though probably not apocalyptic) consequences. And second, what destroyed the …

The World Bank has started a process that appears likely to weaken its environmental and social safeguard policies.  Although the Bank has repeatedly stated there will be no “dilution” of the policies, the Bank’s scoping paper released in October and its ongoing consultations clearly reveal a desire to replace clear standards with discretion and deference to its developing country borrowers.  The Bank, whose environmental and social safeguard policies have long provided important minimum standards for protecting communities affected by international development projects, now runs the risk of sacrificing its leadership role, disempowering affected communities, and forfeiting development effectiveness by once again financing projects that are human rights and environmental disasters. 

Of course the Bank doesn’t say in so many words that it wants to deregulate, but the goals of the policy review is now clear from their scoping paper.  It speaks of the desire to …