ELI In the News
A LARGE MONTEREY CYPRESS PROVED TOO MUCH FOR THE MAIN OVERHEAD TRANSMISSION LINES THAT CARRY ELECTRICITY INTO MONTEREY, PACIFIC GROVE, PEBBLE BEACH AND CARMEL. Amid high winds, the heavy tree, located just outside the fence at the Naval Postgraduate School along Del Monte Avenue, in Monterey uprooted and came crashing down the night of Thursday, March 9, pulling down poles that support the lines. In an instant, approximately 37,000 PG&E customers were cut off from the state’s power grid and left in the dark, one of the largest outages in the state that first day of a major storm.
Louisiana’s inland wetlands are at risk of losing federal protections, after a court decision changed the way wetlands are legally defined. The change, which took effect last month, limits the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and dramatically weakens the Clean Water Act, a pollution control act that celebrates its 51st anniversary today.
University of Georgia professor J. Marshall Shepherd was recently named the recipient of the prestigious 2023 Environmental Achievement Award. This accolade is presented annually by the Environmental Law Institute to individuals or organizations that have made notable contributions to environmental protection, conservation and sustainability.
When the Supreme Court decided to upend federal wetland protection standards in June with its decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), much of the public’s focus shifted to the potential for fallout regarding the what of the legal matter: wetlands. Less emphasis was placed on the how of wetland protection that largely takes place through wetland mitigation banking, or the restoration, establishment, or enhancement of wetlands.
States’ to-do lists just got a little longer: Decide how — or whether — to oversee building, planting and water quality in some wetland areas. Last month, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down federal protections for wetlands covering tens of millions of acres across the country, leaving no regulation of those areas in nearly half the states...
In a 5-4 decision issued on May 25, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the applicability of federal Clean Water Act regulatory authority over wetlands that have a relatively permanent connection to other federal waters. The crux of the Court’s holding in Sackett v. EPA is that, in order to be considered waters of the United States (WOTUS), wetlands and other water features must be “indistinguishable” from traditional navigable waters due to a continuous surface connection...
A new Model Executive Order on Municipal Leadership on Food Waste Reduction developed by NRDC and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) can help municipalities reduce the amount of food wasted throughout municipal operations, highlight the importance of reducing food waste, and demonstrate food waste reduction measures that businesses and other entities may voluntarily replicate...
Environmental advocates who have fought the Mountain Valley Pipeline in court for years say a deal between the White House and Congress to force its completion is corrupt and corrosive to democracy. But despite fears in some quarters that the language of the deal built into debt ceiling negotiations will upend the system of checks and balances built in the government, experts say it is likely to withstand any legal challenge...
Conflict, environmental threats and disasters, climate change, and food insecurity are often considered separate issues with separate solutions. These issues are, in actuality, all directly related and it is essential to remove the divisions between these fields to collaboratively create solutions. There is often a division between the environment, natural resource management, and climate, versus conflict and peacebuilding. According to Carl Bruch of the Environmental Law Institute...
A new toolkit outlining the gold standard for state policy to reduce food loss and waste has just been released by the Zero Food Waste Coalition, of which NRDC is a founding member. “Achieving Zero Food Waste: A State Policy Toolkit” documents the necessary components of more than a dozen state policies related to food waste reduction, explains their connection to federal law, gives examples of successful laws across the country, and includes a model for each policy which can be picked up by legislators and changemakers with minimal alterations...