A Washington appellate court held that the developer of 30 residential waterfront lots must seek a permit under the Shoreline Management Act of 1971 prior to building private docks to accompany the new homes. Because the docks would be designed for the private, noncommercial use of the owners of...
A district court held that EPA does not have a mandatory duty to review and, if necessary, promulgate new PSD rules for ozone simply because the NAAQS for ozone has been revised. The history of the CAA and its numerous amendments unambiguously demonstrates that Congress differentiated duties ste...
A district court held that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) did not violate NEPA or the ESA when it accepted over 300 bids for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. An environmental group argued that the ag...
The Eleventh Circuit upheld FWS' decision denying environmental groups' petitions to designate critical habitat for the Florida panther under the ESA. The Secretary of the Interior listed the Florida panther as an endangered species in 1967—more than a decade before the 1978 amendments required a ...
In 2011, China began its Twelfth Five-Year Plan. The Plan includes both new and revised rules and goals for environmental protection and management. This annual review covers updates in climate change mitigation, environmental protection as it relates to economic and social development, new rules on the protection of water resources, solid and radioactive waste issues, and public participation goals.
The Clean Air Act (CAA) mandates that EPA regulate emissions of more than 180 commonly used industrial chemicals and compounds known as hazardous air pollutants
(HAPs). Unfortunately, EPA does not regulate or restrict emissions of these HAPs based on the health risks posed by ambient-air concentrations or actual exposures
Despite recent efforts by the U.S. Supreme Court to emphasize the “drastic and extraordinary” nature of injunctive relief, many lower federal courts continue to issue injunctions in cases alleging harm to the environment as if injunctive relief were the norm rather than the exception. Apparently reluctant to accept constraints on the exercise of equitable powers, a number of federal courts have interpreted and applied the governing legal standard as set out in the Supreme Court’s 2008 Winter
More robust planning and management is needed to confront new patterns of water use and increasingly extreme and less predictable climate-induced variations in water availability. Issues such as water allocation law, gaps in the array of water management objectives, and comparatively rigid and unresponsive operating rules for water facilities are increasingly more significant. Neither the water law of most eastern states nor the existing water institutions are adequate to adapt to the challenges of less stable and potentially diminished water supply.
On February 28 and 29, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C.) Circuit heard oral argument in a series of closely watched lawsuits challenging regulations issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from automobiles and manufacturing facilities under the Clean Air Act (CAA). Many observers consider the suite of GHG lawsuits, brought by industry groups and state petitioners, among the most significant in CAA and administrative law in the last 30 years. This is because the D.C.
Because of the breadth of the Agency and its administrative responsibilities, locating useful information in a timely and effective manner can often be frustrating. In an effort to provide insight into this “green haze,” this Article is designed to provide the environmental legal practitioner with an annotated guide to EPA.gov, EPA’s public Internet portal.