Much of the battle to preserve and protect water resources happens at the state and local levels – in any number of policy choices advocated and made by individuals, organizations, companies, and governments. In recent years, water activists have begun to deploy a new tool geared to shape these decisions. Long-established in legal jurisprudence, the public trust doctrine holds that certain natural resources belong to all and cannot be privately owned or controlled because of their intrinsic value to each individual and society.
Restoring The Trust: Water Resources & The Public Trust Doctrine, A Manual For Advocates, by CPR Member Scholar Alexandra Klass and Policy Analyst Yee Huang, explores the specific application of the public trust doctrine to the protection of surface water and groundwater resources. The Manual introduces water and environmental advocates to both the opportunities and limitations of applying the doctrine to water protection efforts and encourages reconsideration and reassessment of the legal doctrine to confront the challenges facing modern freshwater management at the state level. The Manual identifies areas where the public trust doctrine applies to existing state water laws and in litigation (an accompanying index shows the state constitutional and statutory provisions and cases on water resources & the public trust doctrine)
Yee Huang previewed the report in a series of blog entries:
Enjoy.
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Ben Somberg | September 29, 2009
Much of the battle to preserve and protect water resources happens at the state and local levels – in any number of policy choices advocated and made by individuals, organizations, companies, and governments. In recent years, water activists have begun to deploy a new tool geared to shape these decisions. Long-established in legal jurisprudence, the […]
Ben Somberg | September 28, 2009
This just in: trying to stop climate change will cost the world about $50 trillion a year, but the impacts of climate change will only cost about $1 trillion a year, so the choice is clear! That’s the thesis of Bjorn Lomborg’s op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post. Presumably the flooding of much of Bangladesh doesn’t […]
James Goodwin | September 25, 2009
Issues of national security have always enjoyed a free pass when it comes to the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as the primary form of making decisions. For example, no military official or politician interested in keeping his job would ever dare publicly question whether the additional money spent on extra armor for tanks to […]
Ben Somberg | September 25, 2009
The Chemical Safety Board released its report Thursday on the 2008 explosion at the Imperial Sugar plant in Georgia, finding that the incident was “entirely preventable” (Reuters article, full report). Ken Ward Jr. gave helpful context for the announcement and followed up afterward with the criticism from unions for the Chemical Safety Board’s “decision to […]
Christine Klein | September 24, 2009
The interstate water wars have gone underground. For more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has been the arbiter of last resort to settle fights between states over the right to use surface streams that cross state lines. But now, the high Court may be asked to settle a long-standing feud between Mississippi and […]
Alice Kaswan | September 23, 2009
The Second Circuit’s ruling Monday in State of Connecticut, et al. v. American Electric Power Company Inc., et al. revived a public nuisance lawsuit against the nation’s five largest electric power companies. The case opens the door to a potential judicial remedy for the alleged harm and increases the pressure on Congress and the Executive […]
Holly Doremus | September 23, 2009
Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. Federal Judge Donald Molloy in Montana has ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to restore grizzly bears in the Yellowstone area to the list of endangered and threatened species. Judge Molloy refused to allow FWS to delist the grizzly on the basis of unsupported wishful thinking about the bear’s […]
Amy Sinden | September 22, 2009
Imagine if the end of the world were coming and everyone was just too polite to talk about it. That’s been the eerie feeling I’ve gotten over the past eight months listening to the President talk about energy policy. Not wanting to be a downer, he couches his energy talk in positive spin: We’re going […]
Holly Doremus | September 22, 2009
Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. In June, President Obama created an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, and directed it to make recommendations for a national ocean policy. The Task Force got right to work. Now, after convening two dozen expert roundtables, inviting public comment, and holding the first of six public sessions, the Task […]