Issue 2

It is our pleasure to introduce Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2017–18 Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law. In its nineteenth year, the Annual Review is the product of collaboration among the student authors, ELQ’s editors, Berkeley Law’s environmental law faculty, and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

Addressing the threat of climate change will require a large-scale transition from fossil fuel-generated power to renewable energy. However, climate change has been politicized in the United States to such an extent that many states’ lawmakers resist embracing wind and solar power for the simple reason that it is favored ...

In 1972, in his dissent to the majority’s decision in Sierra Club v. Morton, Justice Blackmun posed a question: “Must our law be so rigid and our procedural concepts so inflexible that we render ourselves helpless when the existing methods and the traditional concepts do not quite fit and do ...

In 2013, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians sued the Coachella Valley Water District and Desert Water Agency after nearly two decades of voicing its concerns to the agencies over their unsustainable groundwater management practices. Specifically, the Agua Caliente disapproved of the agencies’ overdraft mitigation techniques, which involve artificially ...

On August 15, 2017, the White House issued Executive Order 13,807, which cited the need to improve domestic infrastructure as the basis for its mandate to cap the amount of time federal agencies may spend preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for certain major infrastructure projects. This development followed Executive Order ...

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the gray wolf was systematically eradicated from most of the lower forty-eight states. A population of hundreds of thousands was whittled down to a few hundred, concentrated only in the woods of Minnesota and Isle Royale, Michigan. The wolf has rebounded, thanks ...

In Murr v. Wisconsin, the U.S. Supreme Court confronted the “denominator problem” that arises when defining the baseline unit of property for assessing a regulatory taking. That problem was particularly complex in light of Wisconsin’s merger provision, an increasingly common zoning tool that treats adjacent, commonly owned lots as a ...

Wolves are controversial carnivores whose management generates intense debate. That debate, and the response from wolf managers, often fails to adequately account for rural communities’ fears about wolves. These fears, if ignored, can lead to the frustration of conservation objectives and a disrespect for the law itself. In order to ...

Waterkeeper v. EPA represents a limited victory for advocates of reporting requirements. In this case, the court held that the Environmental Protection Agency could not exempt farms from air pollution reporting requirements based on the use of the de minimis doctrine, which allows for exemptions from regulations to avoid trifling ...

In The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving us Crazy, climate scientist Michael Mann joins with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Tom Toles to take on climate change denialism. Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at The Pennsylvania State University, ...

Martin’s Beach, a privately owned, rugged, photogenic strip of sand south of Half Moon Bay on California’s Pacific coast, has become a flashpoint for a changing state. When billionaire Vinod Khosla—new owner of the beach and abutting property—closed Martin’s Beach to the public in 2009, environmentalists, surfers, and local government ...

California voters and courts consistently support efforts to protect both the environment and taxpayers. These actions often spur changes in policy throughout the nation. For example, California passed comprehensive water quality legislation prior to enactment of the federal Clean Water Act. California also pioneered air quality standards before the federal ...

In January 2017, the Second Circuit upheld the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Water Transfers Rule (Rule), reversing a decision by the Southern District of New York to vacate the Rule and remand the matter to the EPA.1 The decision in Catskill IV was greeted as a victory by many ...

Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to address hazardous substances releases from industrial operations. Although the statute was meant to provide communities with a means of self-protection, CERCLA actions are often commenced by a government agency against a polluter or a group of potentially responsible ...

Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has been a powerful tool for regulating waterborne pollutants. Despite the success of the Clean Water Act in mitigating water pollution, unforeseen challenges arise when regulators use the Clean Water Act to regulate nonconventional pollutants, including invasive species. Invasive species continue to wreak havoc ...