The court holds that 15 of Washington State's 16 best achievable protection (BAP) oil spill prevention regulations are not preempted by federal law. The court first holds that the BAP regulations are not preempted by the Oil Pollution Act (OPA). OPA §1018 provides that nothing in the OPA preempts s...
The court holds that environmental groups have no standing under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to challenge the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) failure to halt actions adversely affecting the environment during the completion of an environmental impact statement (EIS) of a regional...
The court holds that evidence of an oil spill obtained by the U.S. Coast Guard in a warrantless search conducted in the British Virgin Islands of a ferry owned by a U.S. citizen is admissible. The court first holds that the Coast Guard had probable cause to search the ferry in the British Virgin Isl...
I must tell you that we have heard much of this before in less sophisticated form. We heard it in 1970 and again in 1977. We heard it repeatedly in the 1980s. It is the same message today and it boils down to this: Impose the cost of pollution on people who breathe, so the people who pollute can avoid the cost of control. I think that is backwards. What must life be like for that asthmatic child when the very air can make her a shut-in and even threaten her life? What does it cost the rest of us to turn our backs on that child when the solution to her problem is known? The late Sen.
The U.S. Supreme Court most properly held in Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council that it would be "incongruous" if "blinders to adverse environmental effects, once unequivocally removed, [were] restored prior to the completion of agency action simply because the relevant proposal has received initial approval." Many "actions" taken by federal agencies are not discrete, one-time events, but rather represent "ongoing actions" to which continuing obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) must attach for the Act's purpose to be realized.
Chasing the Wind: Regulating Air Pollution in the Common Law State, a book authored by Noga MoragLevine, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, is a broad indictment of "air pollution control policy" in our common-law state narrated from a "historical" and comparative perspective. In the end, though, the indictment misses its mark. For, while the mistakes of U.S. air pollution control policymakers are many, they are not those spotlighted by this book.
Swept Away: A Cautionary Tale Regarding Endangered Species Mitigation
An environmental management system (EMS) is a systematic approach to identifying and managing an organization's environmental obligations and issues that can complement many aspects of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process. An EMS is a "set of processes and practices that enable an organization to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency." As such, EMS is a promising means of bringing progressive private-sector environmental management techniques to federal agency management.
Non-indigenous species (NIS) have increasingly come to be recognized in scientific and popular arenas as one of the most significant threats to biodiversity. That recognition has yet to extend to law and policy, which, in the United States, remain fractured and incomplete. This Article surveys the most significant of the many bits and pieces of U.S. federal law that relate to prevention and control of NIS, and argues that a more coherent and powerful legal framework is needed to address the NIS problem.
The need to protect the public from the serious adverse health effects of motor vehicle emissions has been recognized as an important public health goal since the 1960s. Evidence of adverse health effects associated with vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), benzene, ozone, and lead was the primary driving force behind the enactment of the Air Quality Act of 1967, which set in motion the federal regulation of tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles.