First the good news: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) last week designated a huge expanse of barrier islands, denning areas, and sea ice in the Arctic as “critical habitat” for polar bears under the federal Endangered Species Act. The largest such protected area in the ESA’s history, the new critical habitat covers an area larger than the states of Oregon and Washington combined.

FWS listed polar bears as “threatened” in 2008, after a petition from environmental organizations and a study by the U.S. Geological Survey indicated that shrinking sea ice caused by climate change could reduce the polar bear population by two-thirds within fifty years. Polar bears have since become a powerful symbol of the overwhelming threats to species and ecosystems posed by global warming.

Critical habitat under the ESA refers to the area containing the biological and physical features essential to …

Yesterday was the deadline for Bay states and the District of Columbia to submit their final Phase I Watershed Implementation Plans (WIP). These WIPs are roadmaps that describe how Bay jurisdictions will meet their pollutant reduction obligations under the Bay TMDL. Delaware, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia submitted their plans by the deadline, while Maryland expects to submit in the coming days. New York, which has taken a position essentially in opposition to the Bay TMDL, has not said when it plans to submit its WIP. 

As the plans are made public, CPR will evaluate the plans based on metrics that we developed, and publish a report card. In the meantime, we’ll provide a look at some of the highlights and lowlights in the plans. Today, Virginia:

• Significant improvement, but still lacking specific funding commitments. Virginia’s final WIP is a significant …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality has issued the first of three expected final guidance documents for federal agencies implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. This one, which covers the use of categorical exclusions, is an excellent start.

NEPA is the “look before you leap” environmental law. It requires that federal agencies publicly evaluate environmental impacts before taking action. That means preparing an Environmental Impact Statement before taking actions that significantly affect the quality of the human environment, or an Environmental Assessment if it’s not clear whether an EIS is required.

Categorical exclusions minimize needless paperwork by allowing agencies to identify in advance actions that, individually and collectively, do not have significant environmental impacts and therefore do not require either an EA or an EIS. But it’s important that categorical exclusions accurately identify actions that don’t have significant environmental …

Last week the EPA released its “PSD and Title V Permitting Guidance For Greenhouse Gases.” This Guidance was designed to give the states direction in how to implement permitting requirements for new sources for other criteria pollutants that also produce greenhouse gases on January 2, 2011, and new sources of greenhouse gases following in May, 2011, under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration Program.

The Guidance does an excellent job of summarizing and explaining how the EPA’s current PSD permitting program works (it is the best succinct and correct explanation I have seen), and explains how the procedure applies with the addition of greenhouse gases to the list. Importantly, it reaffirms the current five-step standard for determining what is “Best Available Control Technology” under the PSD program. The Guidance first advises permitting authorities in making an applicability determination based on whether there is …

The EPA announced this morning that it has finalized numeric nutrient criteria for Florida waters -- specific limits on the amounts of nutrient pollutants allowed in the state's water bodies. These criteria will in turn limit discharges by point and non-point sources. Currently, nutrient limits are set only by "narrative" water quality standards -- which have little teeth.

The EPA agreed last year to set the limits following a consent decree reached after a coalition of environmental groups sued the agency. Yee Huang explained in this space why the plan could be a huge step toward cleaning Florida's waters, and could help set a precedent for other states.

Affected industries and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have lobbied hard against the EPA plan. The White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs hosted a meeting on the issue back in January, and another meeting in …

Today CPR President Rena Steinzor and I submitted comments to EPA and each Chesapeake Bay Watershed jurisdiction regarding their draft Phase I Watershed Implementation Plans. The states, we find, need to improve their plans significantly.

After more than 20 years of haplessly stumbling toward restoration, often in fits and starts, EPA and the Bay jurisdictions—Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia—have finally agreed on a final destination: the Bay TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load). Achieving the pollutant allocations in the Bay TMDL will make the Bay once again healthy enough to sustain oyster and blue crab populations and the local economies that depend on them, provide nursery habitat in its grasses, and allow safe recreation for the millions of people who live and work in the Bay Watershed. Establishing the destination goes hand-in-hand with determining the route, which is …

Economics professors at two major universities just issued their reviews of industry-funded assessments of the costs of EPA’s proposed boiler rule (via NRDC). The professors’ conclusions: “the methodology is fundamentally flawed;” “the resulting estimates of job losses are completely invalid;” “the results reported are useless;” “if I were grading this, I would give it an F.” These strongly-worded indictments should make us sit up and take note. 

Professors Charles Kolstad and Jason Shogren were asked to review industry-funded estimates of the costs of EPA’s proposed boiler MACT rule. These estimates have been cited in support of recent industry claims that it would be too costly and result in a large loss of jobs. The professors’ reviews usefully reveal the serious flaws in the “evidence” around which industry has been spinning its anti-regulatory story. In an earlier post, I examined another aspect of the industry story …

As “Cap-and-Trade Is Dead” continues to echo through the empty halls of Congress, California rolled out its proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program on Friday. The proposed regulations send a powerful message that, notwithstanding political paralysis at the federal level, the states are proceeding with meaningful climate action.

The proposed cap-and-trade program, to be voted on by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) at its December 2010 meeting, is scheduled to take effect in January 2012. At the outset, it will apply to the state’s large stationary sources, including manufacturing and utilities. Beginning in 2015, the program will also cover fuel distributors, including distributors of transportation fuels and natural gas or propane not covered by the program’s earlier phase.

The cap-and-trade program is just one of many emissions reduction strategies outlined in California’s scoping plan, the planning document that guides the state’s implementation …