How well are environmental laws in the United States being enforced, and what difference does that make to the quality of our air and water? Professors Flatt and Collins work hard to find the answers in Environmental Enforcement in Dire Straits: There Is No Protection for Nothing and No Data for Free, but run into some familiar roadblocks.
While I take issue with the title, suggesting that environmental enforcement is in “dire straits,” the body of Professors Flatt and Collins' article does not actually evaluate enforcement, but rather enters the oft-discussed world of attempting to find metrics for measuring the effectiveness of state environmental enforcement actions. Using selected Clean Water Act (CWA) and Clean Air Act (CAA) enforcement data, the authors’ four-year survey compares certain enforcement indicators with two parameters: state per capita environmental spending and the type of state government.
While much of the world debates what our environmental laws should be, the less esoteric question of whether the environmental laws we already have are being properly enforced continues to be insufficiently examined. As we approach the fortieth anniversary of modern environmental law, the answer to this “$64 billion question” still is not clear.
A district court held that the current owner of a service station may be held liable under CERCLA for the actions of its predecessor and therefore dismissed the owner's motion for summary judgment. The owner's predecessor allegedly generated and then disposed of waste oil at the site between...
A district court dismissed a city's CERCLA §107(a) suit against the United States to recover past and future response costs incurred at the former Schilling Air Force Base area in Salina, Kansas. CERCLA §113(h) bars challenges to ongoing response actions being taken under §104. Here, the ...
A district court held that utilities who sold used transformers to a scrap metal company in the 1970s are not liable under CERCLA or the Connecticut Environmental Protection Act. After Connecticut's environmental department discovered PCB contamination on the property, the current owner of t...
A district court held that the Secretary of the Interior violated FLPMA and the APA when he withdrew a record of decision (ROD) adopting six revised resource management plans, collectively known as the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, for 2.5 million acres of BLM lands in western Oregon. The S...
The Federal Circuit held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' temporary deviations from the water release rates set forth in an operating plan for the Clearwater Dam that caused increased flooding in Arkansas' Dave Donaldson Black River Wildlife Management Area, which in turn caused excess...
The Ninth Circuit upheld EPA's determination that a California SIP that imposes limits on motor vehicle emissions for years 2009 and 2012 are adequate for purposes of the state's transportation plans and projects. Although EPA’s overall approval process of the SIP is still underway, th...
The Ninth Circuit held that ESA §§7 and 9, as applied to the California delta smelt, do not violate the Commerce Clause. In 2008, the FWS issued a biological opinion (BiOp) to the Bureau of Reclamation concerning two federal and state water diversion projects in California's Central Valley...