ELI In the News
The Interior Department's decision this week to withdraw Florida's federal waters from the agency's five-year offshore drilling plan brought more questions than answers. Chief among those queries: Can Interior do this? The answer: Yes?
Since January 2017, the news headlines have been screaming about one administrative law issue after another—everything from the Congressional Review Act to regulatory rollbacks, from Executive Orders to agency enforcement priorities. These news headlines have quite understandably prompted a flood of questions about what the law does, and does not, allow the president and others within the Executive Branch to do. For example, can a president use an Executive Order to unilaterally revoke an agency rule that is already on the books? Or, at an even more basic level, what exactly is an Executive Order? . . .
With the advent of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s ever-increasing overseas investments have been attracting more attention. In Latin America alone, China has direct investments worth over US$110 billion, and in countries such as Brazil, China’s investments rank alongside those of the US and Spain. Accompanying this, and due to weak environmental and social awareness, there have been frequent failures in how Chinese companies deal with communities in the host countries. Recent years have seen various government bodies publish guidance on environmental and social performance in overseas investment, but the international image of Chinese companies has not improved. Zhang Jingjing, an environmental lawyer and visiting scholar at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington DC, has been studying the environmental and social risks associated with China’s overseas investments since 2010. . . .
Illegal and unregulated fishing supports transnational crime, piracy, insurgency and terrorism and should be treated as a national security issue, a new report from the National Geographic Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies says. Although illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing provide pathways for a host of criminal activities, “it doesn’t have the consciousness of government imagination” not only in the United States but globally, John Hamre, CSIS chief executive officer said on Wednesday. . . .
Officials in the Houston area have asked Congress to pay for one of the largest home buyout programs ever, maybe even the biggest, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. If the money is approved in Washington, which is by no means certain, the Harris County Flood Control District would buy and demolish 5,000 homes and other buildings in the floodplain, using $800 million in federal money. Two other branches of Harris County's government have asked for $329 million to buy out 1,725 homes. . . .
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt recently proposed eliminating federal tax credits for wind and solar power, arguing that they should “stand on their own and compete against coal and natural gas and other sources” as opposed to “being propped up by tax incentives and other types of credits....” Stand on their own? Pruitt surely must be aware that fossil fuels have been feasting at the government trough for at least 100 years. Renewables, by comparison, have received support only since the mid-1990s and, until recently, have had to subsist on scraps. . . .
As the director of the Ocean Program at the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Xiao Recio-Blanco oversees a range of projects directed at the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources. Recio-Blanco manages initiatives along a broad spectrum of legal frameworks involving domestic and international law. Since joining the Ocean Program in early 2016, he served as a primary drafter of a handbook, published in collaboration with the National Geographic Pristine Seas Project, that summarizes legal tools and approaches developing nations, nonprofit organizations, citizens, and others can use to enforce and protect “marine protected areas,” such as marine reserves where fishing is banned or limited. Promoted to director in November 2016, he also is engaged in developing legal strategies for the use of environmental DNA for regulatory policymaking, researching ways to help governments in the Caribbean implement marine spatial planning, a process analogous to land-use planning. . . .
POCOSIN LAKES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, N.C. — Tea-colored water seeps from bogs here in eastern North Carolina's soggy, shrubby "blacklands," as local farmers call them. The Algonquin Indians called them pocosins. "They're not the most charismatic wetland," said Eric Soderholm, a wetland-restoration specialist for the Nature Conservancy. "But their impact on the ecosystem is invaluable." Pocosins serve as ecological sentries regulating freshwater quantity and quality in estuaries. But they are also coveted by farmers for their rich soil. [to read the full article, click here]
There’s an old saying in the arid American West: Whiskey’s for drinking — water’s for fighting. Now the perennial fights over the Colorado River, the biggest source of that water, may be taking on a new dimension. Environmental groups have asked a federal judge in Denver to declare the Colorado an entity with legal rights comparable to people. A win could require governments to consider the rights and interests of the already-overdrawn river before allowing new claims on its water, said attorney Jason Flores-Williams, who filed the suit Monday . . . .
The Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) recently awarded a contract to the Environmental Law Institute to begin Food Waste Co-Digestion at Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities: Business Case Analysis (ENER19C17). The project goal is to develop alternative sustainable business cases for wastewater resource recovery facilities to co-digest food waste, including fats, oil, and grease (FOG), food manufacturing residuals, and source separated organics. The research team will use the “innovation ecosystem” framework to manage risks as clean water utilities deal with increasingly valuable resources.