Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of several alternatives, including release of fertile Suminoe oysters and confined aquaculture of sterile oysters.You might wonder why federal agencies are involved at all. Virginia and Maryland proposed the introduction, prodded by the Virginia Seafood Council, which has conducted its own experiments with Asian oysters in tributaries to the Bay.
A Clean Water Act NPDES permit would seem to be required to introduce these organisms into the Bay, but until recently EPA was busy denying that it had any duty to regulate the discharge of living organisms into waterways. The Corps prepared an EIS only because Congress directed it to do so in 2004. Now officials from the Corps, Virginia, and Maryland will decide what to do.
Read the full post, here.
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Matthew Freeman | February 18, 2009
Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of […]
Shana Campbell Jones | February 17, 2009
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: climate change is different from traditional environmental problems. It’s global, for one thing. Carbon dioxide isn’t a traditional pollutant, for another. It doesn’t cause cancer. It doesn’t kill fish. Plants use it in photosynthesis; every human and animal emits it. The problem is that combustion creates […]
Matthew Freeman | February 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the last of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]
Matthew Freeman | February 13, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the third of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]
Yee Huang | February 12, 2009
From the airspace over the Indonesian gold mine Batu Hijau, it might seem as though the mythical King Midas has been resurrected in a modern, and twisted, form. Where King Midas of Greek lore was granted the touch of gold, the modern King Midas assumes the form of a global mining company that, in a […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | February 11, 2009
Both versions of the economic stimulus package – that passed by the House and by the Senate – include funding for the National Park Service. The bill the House passed last month would allocate $1.7 billion to the National Park Service for “projects to address critical deferred maintenance needs within the National Park System, including […]
Rena Steinzor | February 10, 2009
We’ve written a great deal about Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor who is expected to get the nod to be the “regulatory czar” for the Obama Administration. In a nutshell, our concern is that Sunstein will stifle the efforts of health, safety, and environmental protection agencies to struggle to their feet after eight long […]
Robert Verchick | February 9, 2009
About thirty miles from my front door, heavy barges are dumping rocks into Louisiana’s Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO), hoping to permanently plug the de-commissioned shipping channel before the end of the next hurricane season. It’s a big plug. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the structure will weigh 430,000 tons, “with a base 450 feet […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | February 6, 2009
One logical response to the constant news of the economic recession is cutting back on discretionary purchases and developing a household budget. That is, if we know that times are tough and that we may encounter difficulties sustaining the lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to, we take stock of our circumstances and plan for the future. […]