Member Scholar Robert Adler had an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune over the weekend noting a new survey in Utah showing state residents valuing both a sound economy and a healthy environment as fundamental, co-equal requirements of their quality of life. The survey was part of a "Quality of Life Index" from the Utah Foundation, a group supported by many top businesses in the state.

Adler explained the bigger picture:

Fortunately, clean air and water are not incompatible with jobs and a healthy economy. In the four decades in which the Clean Air Act has been implemented, air pollution in the United States has been reduced by 63 percent while the economy has grown by 210 percent and the nation has created 60 million jobs. Many business people in Utah understand that bad air and dirty water are bad for both quality of life and for …

Guest blogger Peter T. Jenkins is a lawyer and consultant working with the National Environmental Coalition on Invasive Species (NECIS), committed to preventing further harm from invasive, non-native plants and animals. He is Executive Director of the Center for Invasive Species Prevention (CISP).

If the federal government cannot regulate huge constrictor snakes that have already invaded twice in Florida, are preying on Endangered Species Act-listed species, can readily invade in other States and have killed more than a dozen people in recent decades, then what can it regulate? This all came to a head in Congress last week.

On Tuesday of last week, the National Environmental Coalition on Invasive Species learned from a friendly Capitol Hill source that the following day the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, under Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), was going to highlight this issue of regulating invasive snakes as part of …

Senator Susan Collins announced last week the “Regulatory Time-Out Act” (S. 1538), which would put a one-year moratorium on most “economically significant” regulations. On Monday, she said she had 16 other Senators on board – all Republicans. So while I’m not under any illusion this is going anywhere, one point jumped out at me for discussion.

One of Senator Collins’ top targets in the past year has been the boiler MACT rule, which would require certain facilities to reduce their emissions of mercury, soot, lead and other pollutants that harm our health. At first glance, it appears this bill would serve to delay the boiler MACT rule even further than it already has been. (How a 12-month delay, starting presumably sometime during the current 10-month delay, adds up to being the exact right fix is anyone’s guess, and it’s also not clear how this would …

From what we hear, EPA is not a happy place these days, and we don’t wonder why. Never did a hard-pressed staff deserve so much guff, less. Politico reported that the White House is treating Lisa Jackson with kid gloves, hoping against hope that she won’t up and quit on them over the outrageous White House trashing of the efforts to update an outmoded, unhealthy, and legally indefensible 1997 ozone standard. Good thinking for a change. With the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sending e-mails to 1.3 million members and online activists declaring that the White House “threw you overboard,” it’s way past time for the President, his Chief of Staff, and regulatory czar Cass Sunstein to remember they are Democrats, not soldiers in the Boehner army.

Obviously, no one knows what Jackson will do and the decision is both a personal and …

Last Friday, President Obama ordered EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw EPA’s new ambient air quality standard for ground level ozone (smog). The order came in a letter from Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. 

The order does not pretend to be based on science. Indeed, it flies in the face of the available science on the human health effects of ozone as determined on at least two occasions by EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC). The White House acknowledges – even touts – that the order is based on economic considerations (President Obama wrote in a statement Friday that “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover. With that in mind, and after careful consideration, I have requested that …

In perhaps the most troubling sign of his determination to pander to business at the expense of public health, President Obama announced this morning that he had blocked EPA’s science-based efforts to lower the levels of smog that drive children and the elderly inside on Code Red days. Automobile manufacturers, power plant operators, the oil industry, and the Chamber of Commerce are breaking out the champagne, while the public health community despairs of the President who promised so much and has delivered so little.

The hard truth is that in this case the President has decided to flout the Clean Air Act to precisely the same extent as his predecessor.

The Act established a panel of doctors and scientists, known as the Clean Air Act Science Advisory Committee (CASAC), a blue ribbon panel with impeccable credentials. The panel has pleaded with EPA to lower ozone to …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

I should probably start by putting my cards on the table. I’m not really an advocate of cap and  trade as compared with other forms of regulation.  What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide regulations, or something else. The big advantage of cap and trade from that perspective is that some systems are already up and running, and unlike a carbon tax, it doesn’t directly violate any political taboos. Any of these systems will only be as good as its implementation anyway.

There’s been a lot of debate about environmental justice and cap-and-trade, including some interesting exchanges on this blog prompted by the California litigation on the subject.  I thought it would be worth looking into this more carefully, resulting in a short …

Last month, the Nevada Supreme Court held in Lawrence v. Clark County that the public trust doctrine limited the ability of the state to freely alienate certain lands that, though dry at the time of the decision, were submerged under navigable waters at the time of statehood. The case is significant for at least two reasons. First, the court made clear that the public trust doctrine in Nevada places inherent limitations on state power and cannot be easily abrogated by state legislation, thus protecting state resources for present and future generations from the politics of the day. Second, the court clearly grounded its protection for such resources in what I have referred to in earlier scholarship as “ public trust principles.” These public trust principles derive not solely from the common law doctrine but are based on a combination of common law, state constitutional provisions, and statutory provisions …

On Monday, the International Platinum Group Metals Association submitted a Data Quality Act complaint (pdf) to EPA regarding a draft toxicological review of halogenated platinum salts and platinum compounds. This one ought to go straight to the agency’s recycling bin.

IPA, as the trade group calls itself, is complaining that the draft document, released by EPA’s IRIS office in 2009 for peer review and public comment, does not meet the standards of objectivity and utility required under the DQA and its implementing guidelines. In IPA’s view,

EPA’s exclusive reliance on a single and inappropriate study, as well as the proposed reference concentration derived based on that study, constitutes erroneous information, the dissemination of which -- even in “external review draft” form -- contravenes the DQA.

I won’t go into the scientific debate here because it’s irrelevant to how EPA should handle the DQA …