The Hidden Human and Environmental Costs of Regulatory Delay

Catherine A. O'Neill is an Adjunct Law Faculty Member and Environmental Scholar at Lewis and Clark Law School. She is a former Habitat Policy Analyst for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and former Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. She is a former member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.

Professor O'Neill has taught, lectured, and written in the areas of environmental justice, environmental law, natural resources law, and property. Her work considers questions of risk and justice in environmental policy, focusing in particular on issues of environmental justice for Native peoples.

Professor O'Neill has worked on issues of environmental justice with various tribes, advisory committees, and grassroots environmental justice groups. Professor O'Neill was recently a member of the technical advisory board for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community's four-year study, "Bioaccumulative Toxics in Native Shellfish." Professor O'Neill served as consultant to the Forest County Potawatomi Community on environmental justice issues raised by a proposed mine in nearby Crandon, Wisconsin. In the fall of 2002, the tribe successfully concluded its decades-long efforts by purchasing, together with the Sokaogon/Mole Lake Band of Chippewa , the land including the proposed mine and withdrawing the permit application. Professor O'Neill worked extensively with the Fish Consumption Workgroup of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, first as a member of and then as consultant to the Workgroup. The Workgroup's investigation and deliberation over the course of two years culminated in the publication of a major report, Fish Consumption and Environmental Justice, which was transmitted along with recommendations to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002. While on the faculty at the University of Arizona, Professor O'Neill worked with Tucson's Environmental Justice Action Group, assisting the group on environmental justice issues raised by an air quality permit for beryllium and other emissions and a cleanup of TCE contamination.

Following her graduation from law school at the University of Chicago, Professor O'Neill was named a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellow in Public International Law at Harvard Law School. As a fellow, Professor O'Neill studied issues of international environment and development policy. She then worked for the Washington State Department of Ecology as an Air Quality Planner and Air Toxics Coordinator. Her work there included researching the applicability of market-based approaches to air toxics regulation. Prior to joining the faculty at Seattle University, Professor O'Neill taught at the University of Washington and the University of Arizona.

Professor O'Neill has published numerous articles in the areas of environmental justice and environmental policy. These articles have been excerpted in casebooks, anthologies, and other collections on a diverse array of topics including environmental risk, economics and equity, environmental justice, Indian Law, and International Law. Professor O’Neill’s work has twice been selected by her peers for recognition in the Land Use and Environmental Law Review’s ten best articles of the year: for an article on debt-for-nature swaps, co-authored with Cass R. Sunstein, and, most recently, for an article on risk avoidance, entitled No Mud Pies: Risk Avoidance as Risk Regulation.  She also co-authored a chapter entitled, “The Mathematics of Mercury,” in Reforming Regulatory Impact Analysis, Resources for the Future Press, 2009, and her experience with mercury-emitting chlor-alkili plants led to her testifying before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection in 2009.

Professor O'Neill has served on the board of the Washington Wilderness Coalition and has served as a peer reviewer for various journals, including Environmental Management, and Risk Analysis.

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Amy Sinden is a Professor of Law at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and at the Temple-Tsinghua Masters of Law program in Beijing, China.

Professor Sinden has taught, lectured, and written in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, regulatory design, and cost-benefit analysis, human rights, and climate change. 

Before joining the Temple Law School faculty in 2001, Professor Sinden served as senior counsel for Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, handling litigation on behalf of PennFuture and other citizens' and environmental groups. Prior to this position, she was an associate attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) in Seattle, Washington, where she represented a range of environmental, fishing, and other groups in litigation focusing on endangered species, clean water, and water conservation issues. In addition to her involvement with environmental issues, Professor Sinden was an attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where she represented parents in civil child abuse and neglect proceedings, and advocated on behalf of welfare recipients seeking job training and education. Professor Sinden served twice as a law clerk, first for Judge John F. Gerry of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, and later for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Sinden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1991.

Professor Sinden's recent academic writings have criticized the misuse of economic theory in environmental law, arguing against the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental standard setting and countering claims that private property rights can solve environmental problems in the absence of government regulation. She has also written about the application of classical human rights norms to environmental conflicts. Recent publications include Formality and Informality in Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2015 Utah L. Rev. 93, The Missing Instrument: Dirty Input Limits, 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 65 (2009), with fellow CPR Member Scholar David Driesen, Cost-Benefit Analysis: New Foundationas on Shifting Sand, 3 Reg. & Governance 48 (2009), with Douglas Kysar and David Driesen, The Tragedy of the Commons and the Myth of a Private Property Solution, 78 U. COLO. L. REV. 533 (2007).

Amy Sinden
Temple University Beasley School of Law
Philadelphia, PA 
215.204.4969
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Rena Steinzor is the Edward M. Robertson Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and a past president of the Center for Progressive Reform. She is the author of Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.

Professor Steinzor has taught an environmental law survey course, seminars in risk assessments and critical issues in environmental law and science, administrative law, contracts, torts and counseling and negotiation. She has written in the areas of (1) regulatory dysfunction in agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment; (2) the role of centralized White House review on the protectiveness of regulation; (3) environmental federalism, including so-called "unfunded mandates" imposed on state and local governments by the federal government and the impact on public health of devolving authority and responsibility for solving environmental problems; (4) the implications of industry self-regulation on the protection of the environment and human health; (5) "market-based" alternatives to traditional regulation; and (6) political interference with regulatory science.

She is the editor, with Christopher Schroeder, of the CPR-sponsored book A New Progressive Agenda for Public Health and the Environment, published by Carolina Academic Press. She is also the editor, with Wendy Wagner, of the book Rescuing Science from Politics, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Her book, Mother Earth and Uncle Sam: How Pollution and Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids was published by the University of Texas Press in December 2007. With Professor Sidney Shapiro of Wake Forest Law School, she co-authored The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010.

Professor Steinzor began her legal career in 1976, and entered academia in January 1994. From 1987 through 1993, she was associated - first as "of counsel" and ultimately as the partner in charge of the environmental practice - at Spiegel & McDiarmid, a 45-lawyer, Washington, D.C. firm representing approximately 400 cities, counties, states, and public agencies in the energy, environmental, communications, and transportation fields. The practice counseled federal, state, and municipal clients regarding compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.

Prior to joining Spiegel & McDiarmid, Professor Steinzor served as Staff Counsel, Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation, and Tourism of the Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. House of Representatives (James J. Florio, Chairman). She was the primary staff person responsible for legislation that became the "Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986" (Public Law 99-499) and the "Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act" (Public Law 99-519). She also prepared legislation to reauthorize the Toxic Substances Control Act during the 98th Congress.

Professor Steinzor has testified before Congress on several occasions, most recently regarding the impact of health, safety, and environmental regulations on the economy.

Rena Steinzor
University of Maryland Carey School of Law
Baltimore, MD
410.706 0564
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James Goodwin, J.D., M.P.P., is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform. He joined CPR in May of 2008. Prior to joining CPR, Mr. Goodwin worked as a legal intern for the Environmental Law Institute and EcoLogix Group, Inc. He is a published author with articles on human rights and environmental law and policy appearing in the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs and the New England Law Review (co-author with Armin Rosencranz).

Mr. Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Kalamazoo College, where he received a B.A. with honors in Political Science. He received his law degree (with a certificate in environmental law) from the University of Maryland School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude, and his master’s degree in public policy (concentration in environmental policy) from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where he graduated as class valedictorian. While at the University of Maryland School of Law, Mr. Goodwin was a member of the Moot Court team. He is a member of Order of the Coif and Phi Beta Kappa. 

Contact Information:
202.747.0698 ext. 5
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Yee Huang, J.D., L.L.M, is a former CPR policy analyst.

Huang joined the staff in December 2008. Prior to that, her public interest experience had included internships with the Department of State in Vienna, Austria, and Windhoek, Namibia. She interned with the Center for International Environmental Law, researching avoided deforestation under the Kyoto Protocol. Ms. Huang also worked as a law clerk in the Water Branch of the Office of Regional Counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3. During law school, Ms. Huang authored articles published in the University of Denver Water Law Review, the Florida Journal of International Law, and the Cardozo Law Review (with Christine A. Klein). 

Ms. Huang graduated cum laude from Rice University with a B.A. in biology. She received a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study international law at the University of Kent in Brussels, Belgium, where she received an L.L.M. with distinction. Ms. Huang attended the University of Florida College of Law, where she co-chaired the 2008 Public Interest Environmental Conference and graduated cum laude.

Contact Information: 202.747.0698 ex. 6 email