Environmental Law

A cattle rancher in North Dakota has culled half his herd, since there's little grass left to graze.

This summer, Harvard researchers working on a project called Scopex were supposed to fly a literal trial balloon over Sweden. This would have been the first step toward testing a potential method to moderate global warming by releasing small quantities of particles into the atmosphere. Early on, Harvard established an independent advisory committee to provide advice on the science and risks of the proposed experiment, as well as on the need for stakeholder engagement.

2020 was a bad year for delta smelt. No smelt were found in the standard fish sampling programs (fall midwater trawl, summer townet survey). Surveys designed specifically to catch smelt (Spring Kodiak Trawl, Enhanced Delta Smelt Monitoring Program) caught just two of them despite many long hours of sampling. The program to net adult delta smelt for captive brood stock caught just one smelt in over 151 tries. All signs point to the Delta smelt as disappearing from the wild this year, or, perhaps, 2022.

It's been a long and dispiriting four years for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump. There's a large measure of truth in the wry rebranding of the current agency by many observers as the anti-Environmental Protection Agency. The past four years have damaged considerably the stature and reputation of the EPA, a regulatory agency created 50 years ago by another Republican president, Richard Nixon.

In 1972, the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) created a permit system for point source discharges to navigable waters of the United States – rivers, lakes, and coastal waters – with the goal of restoring and protecting their water quality. Typically, these permits are issued by the U.S. EPA or through state agencies to dischargers of wastewater, e.g., from urban and industrial wastewater treatment plants and to other dischargers of potentially contaminated water that reach streams by a pipe or similar conveyance.

Re “Why State Water Contractors sued California over restrictions on water deliveries”; Commentary, April 30

Science-based decision making is key to improved conservation management and a legal mandate in the US Endangered Species Act.  Thus supporters of federal efforts to increase water exports from the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP) have claimed that these efforts are based on new science. Yet unpacking those claims requires some legal analysis, a basic understanding of science, and more than a little nuanced reading.

Co-authored with Peter Moyle, John Durand, Tien-Chieh Hung and Andrew Rypel