In an unprecedented event in 2013, a group of tribal villagers in the Indian state of Orissa (also known as Odisha) rejected the proposal of Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. to mine for bauxite in their territory. The rejection was made through environmental referendums held pursuant to orders of the Supreme Court of India.
In June 2014, EPA proposed an emission guideline for emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from existing fossil fuel-fired electric generating units (EGUs). This rulemaking--commonly known as the Clean Power Plan (CPP)--identifies as the “best system of emission reduction” a set of four “building blocks” that electric utilities can undertake or purchase credits for to reduce emissions from regulated EGUs. This Comment considers whether the building block approach is permissible under CAA §111(d).
The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has again offered for public comment draft guidance on how to evaluate the environmental impacts of climate change in analyses prepared under NEPA. This is not the first time CEQ has ventured into the area. In 2010, the Council proposed draft guidance on the same subject but never finalized it, presumably because a substantial number of senators (all Republicans) vigorously opposed the concept that environmental impacts under NEPA might include those associated with climate change. There was no public follow-up.
On January 14, 2015, the Eastern District of Washington held that Cow Palace Dairy, LLC, is liable under RCRA for storing, applying, and managing manure in a way that poses a substantial and imminent endangerment to public health in violation of open dumping provisions. This opinion is significant because it defines Cow Palace’s manure as solid waste under RCRA. The court focused on the manner in which Cow Palace stored and used the manure to determine that RCRA exemptions, such as the agricultural waste exemption for fertilizer, did not apply.
In United States v. DTE Energy Co. (DTE), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that EPA may use Clean Air Act New Source Review (NSR) to challenge a source’s preconstruction emission projection on narrow procedural grounds, but not to “second- guess” the projection’s substance. The decision is based on an incorrect interpretation of the NSR regulations and undermines the NSR program’s preconstruction review component.
This Article, the third in a series of five, examines the meaning of “navigable waters” under the Clean Water Act. It traces the traditional judicial interpretation of navigable waters and how Congress and EPA attempted to extend its meaning, then examines how the term has been applied in the context of tributaries and wetlands, isolated waters, groundwater, and EPA’s unitary theory of navigable waters.
To date, most government efforts to promote distributed solar energy have involved incentivizing property owners to undertake voluntary installations. However, that approach is changing, as government actors move to increase distributed solar generation capacity not only through incentive programs, but also through requirements. Such a change from voluntary to mandatory measures represents a seismic shift in the approach to encouraging distributed solar generation, and it may raise objections about interference with property expectations.
Recent growth in rooftop solar energy has caught the attention of utilities. Every customer who generates her own electricity is a customer who is not buying it (or at least as much of it) from the power company. Indeed, if she lives in one of the many states that permit or require such arrangements, the utility may have to buy back any excess electricity that her solar system produces.
Notwithstanding the technical merits of distributed generation, state incentives for and regulation of the power sector have come under significant legal attack during the past five years. In 23 constitutional challenges to state sustainable and distributed energy regulation, the states lost at some level in 17 of the 23 cases, or the cases were settled in favor of the challengers; five were dismissed on procedural grounds or are still pending. States that lost legal challenges can be ordered to pay plaintiffs’ legal fees into the millions of dollars.
Climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation demand a paradigm shift in urban development. Currently, too many of our cities exacerbate these problems: they pollute, consume, and process resources in ways that negatively impact our natural world. Cities of the future must make nature their model, instituting circular metabolic processes that mimic, embrace, and enhance nature. In other words, a city must be a regenerative city or, as some say, an “ecopolis.”