On October 1, 2015, after years of delay punctuated by litigation and political maneuvering, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued revised national ambient air quality standards for ground-level ozone. Last set at 75 parts per billion (ppb) in 2008, the new standard of 70 ppb has already elicited promises of legal challenges from industry and environmental advocates. High levels of ozone are linked to respiratory illness, especially among children and the elderly.

This Article is adapted from Chapter Seven of John R. Nolon, Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, published by ELI Press. The book describes how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods.

Despite the enactment of scores of wildlife protection laws, illegal activities are difficult to detect under current enforcement policies. Both the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act include language providing monetary incentives to persons who disclose information about wildlife crimes, but these provisions have not been effectively implemented. Given the years of delay in implementing them, Congress should step in once again to ensure that its original intent is effectuated, either through oversight of the responsible federal agencies or legislation.

Coastal landowners have an acute interest in armoring the shoreline by erecting barriers to protect their property from inundation and erosion. One problem with armoring is that the barrier potentially destroys coastal wetlands and beaches and prevents them from migrating as sea levels rise. Under the public trust doctrine, the public has the right to use trust resources and, in some states, to conservation of trust resources and the ecological services they provide.

In Humane Society of the United States v. Jewell, a federal district court invalidated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) delisting of wolves in the western Great Lakes (WGL) Distinct Population Segment. This decision culminated a long history of litigation over wolves in the WGL region, and has generated a political backlash, with congressional attempts to delist wolves and to weaken the ESA itself. The author argues that the Jewell court’s analysis is erroneous on several central legal issues.

In two decisions released in November 2015, Merrick v. Diageo Americas Supply, Inc., and Little v. Louisville Gas & Electric Co., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit unambiguously held that the Clean Air Act does not preempt state common-law claims brought against regulated sources of air emissions in the same state. Many practitioners and observers had expected courts to treat state common-law claims the way the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with federal common-law claims as being preempted by the CAA.

In Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, the leader of the Catholic church presents a moral argument for combating climate change and other environmental harm. As he has done throughout his papacy, the Pope highlights concerns about economic disparity, arguing that climate change disproportionally impacts developing nations and the world’s poor. Along with critiques of “consumerism” and the modern economic system, the Pope expressed deep skepticism about the motives and impacts of market mechanisms as emissions reduction tools.

“The history of California is written on its waters. . . .” These words by California appellate justice Ronald B. Robie in State Water Resources Control Board Cases reflect the state’s reputation for epic water wars, past and present. With landmark groundwater legislation—the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)—passed into law late last year, the landscape for groundwater will change for years and decades to come. That much is certain: Groundwater basins in California will be mandatorily regulated and managed statewide for the first time in California’s 165-year history.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan was accompanied by model rules for states that provide both a mass-based and a rate-based approach. The model rules, once finalized, will give states a streamlined but customizable template that is trading ready. EPA also provided proposed mass- and rate-based federal plans that would be implemented absent state-promulgated plans. They are similar to the proposed model rules, but they exclude certain compliance options, such as demand-side energy efficiency under the rate-based approach.

This Article, the fourth in a series of five, examines the continuing struggles to define “point source” and “nonpoint source” under the Clean Water Act. State regulation of nonpoint sources is neither pervasive nor robust, and most continuing water pollution problems can be traced primarily to nonpoint sources. EPA should define nonpoint sources by regulation and begin to expand the definition of point source by incorporating established case law and Agency practice to bring more nonpoint sources into the point source definition.