This abstract, which is adapted from Michele Okoh, Forgotten Waters, 111 Geo. L.J. 723 (2022), argues that approaches to addressing access to safe drinking water must account for the legacy of discrimination and discusses why the Rural Electrification Act provides a promising model to provide safe drinking water to well-dependent populations.
Natural resource damages (NRD) under federal law is a statutory cause of action to compensate for injury to natural resources resulting from releases of hazardous substances or oil. Designated officials are authorized under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), among others, to act as “trustees” on behalf of the public or tribes.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) established the “Superfund,” which allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up contaminated sites. It also forces the parties responsible for contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for the EPA-led cleanup work. The Superfund program relies on several tools to protect against lasting contamination.
For more than half a century, the Chesapeake Bay and many of its tributaries have suffered from poor water quality. Compelled by an executive order and litigation, in 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load (Bay TMDL) to reduce pollution discharges and thereby restore Bay water quality; unfortunately, the Bay TMDL will fail to meet its 2025 objective.
As marketers across the fashion industry increasingly tout “circularity” initiatives, the reality remains that exponentially more clothes are being produced, purchased, and promptly thrown away than ever before. This Comment focuses on governmental responses to the environmental crisis created by textile waste that promote circularity in the fashion industry through extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation of textiles.
Since passage of the early natural resource protection laws and regulations in the United States decades ago, legal, technical, and economic practitioners have been challenged with understanding the ever-changing and ever-evolving environmental law and policy landscape. Riveting changes have advanced the position of natural resources and related matters of conservation and biodiversity across domestic and international agendas, in corporate, government, and public interest agendas, and in the lives of everyday citizens.
Congress in the 2020s has authorized three new environmentally focused grant programs relating to western waters and appropriated $450 million in multi-year funding. The Bureau of Reclamation is responsible for creating and implementing these programs, giving it a new tool and resources for addressing stubborn environmental problems—some caused by the Bureau’s many dams.
On August 29, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a direct final rule that revised the “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) definition rule. This rule amended the final WOTUS rule, previously published in January 2023, to be consistent with the Supreme Court’s May decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. On September 14, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts to analyze the new rule and discuss its regulatory and policy consequences.
Communities around the world are seeking to acknowledge nature’s rights through legal tools and litigation. This Article provides an overview of recent developments in earth law movements, including Rights of Nature, Rights of Rivers, and Ocean Rights, and considers the potential impacts these ecocentric conservation measures could have on Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Using the most comprehensive data set on U.S. household recycling behavior, this Comment quantifies the relative impact on recycling of characteristics associated with recycling in different populations, under different governmental rules, and having different facilitating resources and amenities.