ELI In the News

Your next visit to the Nashville Farmers’ Market on Rosa Parks Boulevard will include six new items. No, not necessarily farm-fresh peaches or asparagus, though those will likely be there too, depending on when you arrive. The market is introducing six custom-designed receptacles that allow customers to sort their trash. . . .

In a major victory for environmentalists, Maine has become the the first state to ban Styrofoam containers for food and beverages. The ban, signed by Democratic Governor Janet Mills on Tuesday, will take effect on January 1st, 2021.The ban will make it illegal for restaurants to sell or distribute the containers (such as bowls, plates, cups, trays, and cartons), with penalties of up to $100 in fines. In addition, grocery stores and other businesses will be prohibited from using the containers. There are some exceptions: Hospitals, seafood shippers, and state-funded meals-on-wheels programs will still be allowed to use Styrofoam. . . .

The city of Arcata produces more than two million gallons of sewage per day — there is nothing out of the ordinary about that statistic; it’s in line with the amount of sewage generated by cities of similar size. The difference between Arcata and those other similarly sized cities is the manner in which the sewage is treated. The procedure the city currently uses to process its wastewater didn’t exist 50 years ago. It was the engineering skill of two men that led to an innovative wastewater treatment system that not only handles the city’s sewage but also provides a wildlife sanctuary that is one of the city’s most popular attractions.

Two leading environmental law scholars are out with a new trove of recommendations for fighting climate change, and they're recruiting lawyers to put the plan in action. Columbia University's Michael Gerrard and Widener University's John Dernbach released an extensive playbook this spring designed to assist lawyers and policymakers working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In a hefty 1,000-plus pages, "Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States" explores various strategies for slashing emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases. The tome builds upon research from the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, a global collaboration that focuses on technical approaches to limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. [click here to read the full story]

The world is waking up to the growing problem of plastic waste contaminating our ocean and terrestrial environments. Local governments—lauded as laboratories of innovation—have begun enacting bans and fees on single-use plastics, reducing the amount entering the waste stream in the first place. Businesses are stepping up; national and multinational governance bodies are adopting laws cutting down on the manufacture and distribution of single-use plastics. In the United States, California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Maine have initiated statewide restrictions, while Oregon and Washington are considering similar measures.

In response to the sometimes mind-numbing and frightening challenges that climate change presents to humanity, a pair of legal scholars have something to offer — an enormous new book filled with over 1,000 potential solutions. Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States outlines recommendations to help arm policymakers, the legal community, and everyday citizens with a giant menu of legal options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2050. “No one has done this, at this scale, in the U.S.,” said John Dernbach, director of the Environmental Law and Sustainability Center at Widener University in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Dernbach co-edited the book, along with Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. . . .

"The trade in illegal timber products—those harvested and exported in contravention of the law of the producer country—is entangled in corruption, conflict, insecure land rights, and poor governance,” said Sandra Nichols Thiam, Senior Attorney of the Environmental Law Institute. She moderated a panel titled “Citizen Enforcement in the Forestry Sector” hosted by the Environmental Law Institute that explored illegal logging within the forest sector.

Mere days after Dominion Energy powered up its new transmission line across the James River from Surry to Jamestown, VA, a ruling by a federal court of appeals cast the controversial infrastructure’s future in doubt. On March 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an opinion overturning the project’s key permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the grounds that the agency did not meet its obligations under the National Environmental Protection Act and directing the Corps to prepare an environmental impact statement on the 17-tower, 500-kilovolt line.

Though the Atlantic Coast pipeline's path winds through mountainous Appalachia, the contentious gas project may face its biggest uphill battle in court.

Over the last two months, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has instructed or allowed federal agencies to revisit a slate of critical approvals for the gas pipeline. The court's Dec. 7 delay of a key Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Act review, which the 4th Circuit has now twice rejected, led developers to halt construction.

Since that time, the court has returned several other key federal permits and approvals — sometimes at regulators' request. In the meantime, the project's costs and schedule have become moving targets.

Legal scholar Zechariah Chafee, Jr, said it best: “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins,” he wrote in 1919, attributing the quote to an unnamed judge – and reflecting the fundamental challenge of all regulation, including the rules and laws that protect the waters of the United States. The Clean Water Act (CWA), for example, evolved over decades, as have the rules that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) develop for implementing it. At the core of these rules is the acknowledgement that it sometimes makes sense to build a road through a wetland or dredge a stream, but only if the developer gets permission from competent authorities and makes up for the damages by restoring degraded areas of equal or greater environmental value. . . .