Colorado is one of the epicenters of hydraulic fracturing in the United States. In addition to promising a lower carbon fuel source and increased domestic energy security, this development has attracted opposition from local citizens and governments worried about the local impact of the natural gas activities. The authors review the state of play in Colorado hydraulic fracturing and suggest that local efforts to restrict hydraulic fracturing should themselves be prohibited due to comprehensive state regulation in this arena.

Attempts to regulate intensive livestock operations at the local level have met stiff resistance from state legislatures. Local governments, frustrated by the hands-off approach of federal and state law, have tried to pass local ordinances that address potential detrimental impacts to the water, air, and quality of life from factory farms in their communities. Yet, increasingly, state legislatures have blocked these efforts.

Dynamic marine protected areas (MPAs) are areas with a range of dormant management responses that turn on only when conditions warrant them. This new tool has the potential to allow resource managers to respond to impending but highly uncertain future environmental harms, such as the effects of climate change, in a timely fashion without abridging existing public participation processes. The creation of a dynamic MPA would require careful integration of science, law, and policy.

Water policies and programs in the western United States have not always achieved the results originally envisioned. The surrounding circumstances, from public opinion and involvement to hydrology and administrative capacity, significantly influence policy and program effectiveness. This Article identifies and provides examples of these key external characteristics, categorizing them under five overarching factors: social and political dynamics; physical landscape; economics; law; and administrative capacity.

Over the last half-decade, a variety of federal legislative proposals for limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been put forward, most of which would set a price on carbon. As of early 2013, the one politically plausible policy appears to be a carbon tax, passed as part of a larger fiscal reform package. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun regulating GHG emissions from a variety of sources using its authority under the Clean Air Act. It may be necessary to choose between these two policies, however.

Cooperative federalism varies widely from program to program, and depends on the relationship each statute prescribes. The Clean Water Act (CWA), while providing ample room for state participation, is heavily federal and leaves little about this relationship to chance. Nonetheless, the federal-state interplay goes on in as many venues as there are states and clean water programs, and the tensions that arise are inevitable.

The Obama Administration’s effort to divide and delist portions of the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population was rejected by the Montana federal district court. Congress intervened and enacted a rider on Interior’s 2011 appropriation bill that delisted the wolves in the Northern Rockies, except Wyoming, and precluded judicial review of the action. The Ninth Circuit upheld the congressional action, which should have been rejected under alternative legal theories. The Obama Administration has proposed delisting the gray wolf across most of the United States.

Biofuel policies under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) housed in the CAA and administered by EPA and under the Internal Revenue Code administered by the Internal Revenue Service are reviewed to demonstrate inconsistencies not only between the statutes, but also the regulations developed by each agency. The lack of harmonization creates unintended consequences of some fuels reaping government incentives and others, being used in similar applications and delivering equitable environmental benefits, receiving no government assistance in the form of tax credits or participating in the RFS.

EPA is establishing carbon dioxide (CO2) emission standards for existing electric generating units (EGUs) under §111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The prospect of undertaking such a significant regulatory program under the authority of a little-used provision of the law has generated a number of questions about what EPA may and may not do in shaping this new regulatory policy.

When President Gerald Ford signed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) into law in 1976, he declared it “one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation . . . enacted by the Congress,” one that would “close a gap in our current array of laws to protect the health of our people and the environment.” History has not been kind to President Ford’s prediction.