Author name: Harvard Law Development

By Helen Marie Berg, General Member, Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment.

In January 2016, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appealed to the federal government for a $96 million emergency aid grant in response to the tremendous and growing public health crisis in Flint, Michigan. City and state officials caused the crisis. They decided to switch the city’s drinking water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River, but failed to add the proper anti-corrosion treatment to the lead pipes that distribute water to the city’s 100,000 residents. That decision caused the lead to leach from the pipes, ultimately poisoning all who drank the city’s water.

Governor Snyder’s request was not only for funds, but for President Obama to declare that the crisis in Flint was legally a disaster—a prerequisite for such an allocation of money and for eligibility for certain government programs. The headline of an article in the Detroit News shortly after Snyder’s request read: “Obama gives $80 million to Michigan for Flint.” Though it sounds hopeful, this headline is misleading.

President Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint—but not a disaster. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 was enacted “to support State and local governments and their citizens when disasters overwhelm them.” The Act outlines the process to receive a presidential disaster declaration that would activate “an array of Federal programs to assist in the response and recovery effort.” Governor Snyder’s request for such a presidential disaster declaration was denied. He appealed the decision immediately—only for it to be denied again two days later.

By Will Grossenbacher, Editor-in-Chief, Virginia Environmental Law Journal

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From October 2–5, 2015, the State of South Carolina, and the City of Charleston in particular, experienced historic rains: sites in the Charleston area reported up to twenty-six inches of rain. The downpour combined with high tides to create flooding that closed dozens of streets throughout the City. Then, at the end of October, Charleston experienced the fourth-highest tide ever recorded in the City. Persistent winds combined with the bi-monthly spring tide to create a high tide that reached 8.7 feet above mean lower low water level in Charleston Harbor. The two unrelated events in the same month show just how vulnerable the City is to flooding. When rising sea levels and other climate-change-induced flooding are added to the mix, the flood risk will only increase, especially for the Charleston’s numerous historic properties.

Charleston is a city rich in historic resources. In fact, the City’s Historic District contains more than 1400 “historically significant buildings.” Additionally, of the seventy-seven National Historic Landmarks (“NHLs”) in the State of South Carolina, thirty-three are located in Charleston. While the City of Charleston has begun working to address flooding issues, it has yet to address specific climate-change-related threats to its historic resources. Charleston should therefore look to the example provided by other coastal cities and begin implementing law and policy changes designed at protecting historic resources from the impacts of global climate change.

By Eric DeBellis, Senior Executive Editor, Ecology Law Quarterly.

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The overwhelming majority of environmental enforcement actions settle out of court, but overlooking settlements as merely a mechanical means to save time and court costs is a mistake. An agency’s approach to settlement has tremendous environmental justice implications that go largely unnoticed.

In a traditional enforcement settlement model, the government claims the exclusive right to speak for the people. It brings an enforcement action against the defendant, and the two parties negotiate a penalty amount. The defendant signs a settlement agreement and pays the penalty to the Treasury. This is the “Speeding Ticket” settlement model. This model is expedient, but it excludes affected communities. The Speeding Ticket model remains the norm today, but several state and federal agencies have begun to explore an alternative tool: the supplemental environmental projects (SEP).

By Myles Osborne, General Member, Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law.

This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment.

In late October 2015, the Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility began spewing natural gas into the air over the San Fernando Valley at a rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. Composed primarily of methane, a “short-lived” climate pollutant with twenty-five times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide, the leak effectively doubled the methane emissions rate for the Los Angeles Basin. With substantial environmental costs and several botched attempts at containment, the leak did not escape comparisons to 2010’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill as stinking clouds of methane entered the atmosphere, displacing families and businesses in the nearby community of Porter Ranch.

By Stacy Shelton, Staff Editor, Vermont Journal of Environmental Law. 

This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment.

With millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from a blown-out well in the summer of 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners settled on a Hail Mary plan to save a generation of sea turtles: Translocation. Using specially outfitted FedEx trucks, federal and state biologists moved about 25,000 turtle eggs from Gulf of Mexico beaches to the Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, away from the oil’s path. About half the eggs hatched, and the hatchlings were released into the Atlantic Ocean. In their calculation, the biologists had weighed the risks of reduced hatchling success and interfering with their ability to imprint on natal beaches by moving the turtles against the probability the hatchlings would swim into the oil and certain death if they remained in place.

Today, climate change has biologists working out similar but exponentially more complicated calculations in deciding whether to move species. Instead of simple translocation–which is the human-assisted movement of a species within its historic range—biologists are considering whether the ecological disruptions due to rising temperatures will necessitate moving species outside their historic range as their native habitats become inhospitable. Such assisted movement has been termed “managed relocation,” defined by scientists as the intentional act of moving a species outside its historic range in response to climate change. Similar terms for managed relocation are “assisted migration” and “assisted colonization.” The focus of this paper is on managed relocation and the legal, scientific, and political issues it raises.