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Foreword to the 2015-16 Annual Review

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

We are honored to introduce Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2015–2016 Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law. Now in its seventeenth year, the Annual Review is a collaborative endeavor. It is founded on Berkeley Law’s renowned environmental law program, which itself is built upon some of the leading scholars in ...

Climate Change and Compact Breaches: How The Supreme Court Missed an Opportunity to Incentivize Future Interstate-Water-Compact Compliance in Kansas v. Nebraska

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

Recklessly gambling with Kansas’s water rights to the Republican River, Nebraska used 17 percent more water than it was allocated by the interstate Republican River Compact during a drought in 2005–06. Kansas sued Nebraska for this breach of compact in the Supreme Court. While the Court ultimately found that Nebraska ...

No Relief: How the Ninth Circuit’s New Standard for Injunctions Threatens the Precautionary Nature of the Endangered Species Act

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

Cottonwood Environmental Law Center v. United States Forest Service presents a troubling development for environmental plaintiffs seeking injunctive relief for procedural violations of the Endangered Species Act. The panel majority overturned a thirty-year-old presumption of irreparable harm, in a move that undermines the precautionary purpose of the Endangered Species Act.

Jurisdictional Determinations: An Important Battlefield in the Clean Water Act Fight

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

This Note provides a broad overview of section 404 of the Clean Water Act and the implications of its implementation regarding what constitutes “waters of the United States.” This Note focuses on the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to clarify the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act through the Clean Water ...

Standing in a Federal Agency’s Shoes: Should Third-Party Action Affect Redressability under the National Environmental Policy Act?

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

Through the doctrine of constitutional standing, federal courts have consistently attempted to limit their jurisdiction to claims in which they can redress the plaintiff’s injury. This determination becomes more complicated when a third party asserts that it would “replace” the defendant’s role and cause the same injury to the plaintiff ...

Alternative Reasoning: Why the Ninth Circuit Should Have Used NEPA in Setting Aside the Tongass Exemption

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

After over a decade of controversy and litigation, the Ninth Circuit finally shielded the Tongass National Forest from road construction and timber harvest. In Organized Village of Kake v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, the court’s en banc panel struck down the Forest Service’s decision to exempt the Tongass from the ...

Rained Out: Problems and Solutions for Managing Urban Stormwater Runoff

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

The Clean Water Rule was the latest attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to define “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. While both politics and scholarship around this issue have typically centered on the jurisdictional status of rural waters, like ...

ICG Hazard: Permitting Away the Clean Water Act

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

In Sierra Club v. ICG Hazard, the Sixth Circuit held that a general permit holder is only liable for discharges expressly prohibited by his/her permit terms as long as 1) he/she adequately disclosed other discharges and 2) the permitting agency reasonably contemplated those discharges at the time the permit was ...

Montana Environmental Information Center v. BLM and the Future of Methane Emissions Mitigation under NEPA

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

The United States leads the world in natural gas production, and by the end of 2014, domestic oil production had reached its highest rate in thirty years. While this U.S. natural gas production occurred on both private and public property, this In Brief focuses specifically on public lands managed by ...

Liability for Environmental Damages from the Offshore Petroleum Industry: Strict Liability Justifications and the Judgment-Proof Problem

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, one of the worst environmental man-made disasters and the largest ever oil spill in the United States, scholars and government investigators analyzed the offshore regulatory regime and its implementation in search of failures that led to the accident and possible solutions. Relatively ...

Gulf Restoration Network v. McCarthy: The Necessity Determination Mechanism to Ensure Government Accountability

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

Since the 1970s, the Gulf of Mexico has suffered from human-produced nutrient pollution. The ongoing pollution from the Mississippi River Basin has created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that harms biodiversity and the fishing and tourism industries. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected a petition from ...

Pollinator Stewardship Council v. EPA and the Duty to Research FIFRA Applications

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) prohibits the sale or distribution of any pesticide without prior registration and approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA may deny applications for pesticide registration when “necessary to prevent unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.” On September 10, 2015, the Ninth ...

Grand Canyon Trust v. Williams: Tribal Land Protection and the Battle for Red Butte

Julie Rose

March 25th 2020

In the midst of a Northern Arizona plateau, a rust-colored hill rises steeply from a base of sandstone to a summit of volcanic rock. The Havasupai Tribe (“the Tribe”) refers to this land as the “mountain of the clenched fist,” and it is one of their most sacred spaces. More ...

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