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This is the first of four posts on the application of the public trust doctrine to water resources, based on a forthcoming CPR publication, Restoring the Trust: Water Resources and the Public Trust Doctrine, A Manual for Advocates, which will be released this summer.  If you are interested in attending a free web-based seminar on […]

In a memo sent to EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance on July 2nd, Lisa Jackson, the Agency’s Administrator, observed that “the level of significant non-compliance with Clean Water Act permitting requirements is unacceptably high and the level of enforcement activity is unacceptably low.” She directed Agency officials to develop a new plan for […]

Bowing to right-wing political pressure, Cass Sunstein, nominee for “regulatory czar” in the Obama Administration, broke months of official silence to plead his case with the cattle ranchers and agribusiness lobby who have engineered a hold on the nomination by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).  Sunstein’s move was all the more troubling because his absence from […]

This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. Greenwire reports that one issue in the confirmation hearing may be a case involving climate change.  The plaintiffs sued under the federal common law of nuisance for injunctive relief against public utilities for their carbon emissions.  The case has now been pending before a panel including Judge […]

Perhaps – as a byproduct of a recent, revealing report by the Government Accountability Office and the economic downturn – the bubble of market growth for the bottled water industry may finally deflate, if not outright burst.  Pop!  The report, released last Wednesday, further debunks the myth that the quality of bottled water is better […]

In this month’s Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook writes that privatizing the seas through use of individualized transferrable quotas (ITQs) is the solution to the grave problem of overfishing. Recently, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco came out strongly in favor of ITQs (which the agency is calling “catch shares”), and has committed her agency to “ transitioning to […]

On March 9, President Obama announced a science integrity initiative aimed at taking the politics out of science. In his memorandum that day, he laid out the broad principles and instructed the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to “develop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the […]

It was, as Greenwire put it, a rough term for environmental interests; in five separate cases the Supreme Court overturned rulings that environmentalists had favored. CPR Member Scholar Amy Sinden told the NYTimes of one of the themes: “It’s become a cliché to say the Roberts court is about the expansion of executive power … […]

Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. For much of the past decade, the Department of Agriculture regulations governing land and resource management planning in the national forests have been a kind of political ping-pong ball, bounced back and forth between administrations, and between the executive branch and the courts. Now the U.S. District Court for […]