What can a frustrated state legislator do when the agency implementing the Clean Water Act fails to renew expired permits or sanction major violators? Legislation recently adopted by Maryland provides some innovative answers....more
In 1959 Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point facility, located on the Patapsco River near the mouth of Baltimore Harbor, was the biggest steelmaking facility in the world. With close to 40,000 employees, Sparrows Point over many...more
At ACOEL’s 2019 annual meeting in Williamsburg I chaired a panel on the ongoing restoration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, which I described as the biggest, and arguably the best, example of cooperative federalism in the...more
What should EPA and environmental protection look like in the future? A report issued by American University’s Center for Environmental Policy in December, entitled Moving Forward: Future Directions for EPA and Environmental...more
At ACOEL’s meeting in Williamsburg last month Dan Esty challenged us to undertake a multi-year project to transform the legal framework for environmental protection. He argued persuasively that our country has outgrown its...more