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Showing 1,481 results

Matt Shudtz | September 8, 2010

Scientific Uncertainty About BPA Is the Inevitable Result of a Broken TSCA

In Tuesday’s New York Times story, “In a Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer,” Denise Grady characterizes the continued development of new studies about the endocrine disrupting chemical as yet another dispute between environmentalists and chemical manufacturers over a ubiquitous chemical with uncertain health effects. While her assessment of the state of the […]

Yee Huang | September 2, 2010

For the Price of a Speeding Ticket: Raw Sewage in a River Near You

The Capital of Annapolis reported recently on the alarmingly low penalties assessed by the Maryland Department of Environment for massive spills of raw sewage—containing a mix of untreated human, residential, agricultural, and industrial wastewater—into the state’s waters. This article supports one of the key findings from CPR’s report, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in […]

Ben Somberg | August 31, 2010

Not Carbon Offsets, but Carbon Upsets

CPR Member Scholar Douglas Kysar has an opinion piece in the Guardian making the case for Carbon Upsets. Upsets, you ask? That is: Rather than award credits based on development that moves us toward a cleaner but still very dirty future, why not award credits to legal and political actions that have more dramatic impact? […]

Rena Steinzor | August 30, 2010

At Coal Ash Hearing, Poisoned Waters and the ‘Stigma Effect’ on the Agenda

The below is testimony (PDF) given today by CPR President Rena Steinzor at the EPA’s public hearing on coal ash regulation. The hearing, in Arlington, VA, is the first of seven; the public comment period has been extended to November 19. See CPR on Twitter for updates from the hearing. We are all familiar with […]

Joel A. Mintz | August 26, 2010

Some Encouraging News About Everglades Restoration

The past year has certainly had disappointments for people who care about protecting the environment. A major international conference on global climate change yielded no sweeping agreement to reduce greenhouse gases. The United States Senate declined to pass comprehensive climate change legislation, and residents of Louisiana and other states bordering the Gulf of Mexico suffered […]

Yee Huang | August 23, 2010

A Look at the UN’s Resolution on Water as a Human Right

a(broad) perspective No single substance is more necessary to humans than water. For people in developed countries, clean, potable water arrives with the simple turn of a faucet knob. For much of the world’s population, however, getting access to clean water is much more complex, if not impossible, and not having clean water leads to […]

Shana Campbell Jones | August 19, 2010

Scholarship Round-Up: New Directions in Environmental Law

Last week, the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy published New Directions in Environmental Law, a symposium issue featuring articles from six CPR Member Scholars.   The articles explore how lessons learned from first generation environmental statutes should be applied to future legislation in order to accomplish the original goals of the environmental movement. Dan […]

Holly Doremus | August 17, 2010

New NEPA Procedures for Offshore Drilling

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Monday the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a report on the NEPA analysis that preceded exploratory drilling at the ill-fated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, together with recommendations for improving NEPA analysis in the future. According to CEQ, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (successor […]

Yee Huang | August 11, 2010

Update on Maryland’s CAFO NPDES Permitting Program

In June, I wrote about a settlement between EPA and environmental groups that requires EPA to publish guidance on the implementation of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and to propose a rule to collect more information on these operations. In that post, I cited numbers from EPA […]