Vibrant Environment

As reported in the Environmental Law Reporter’s Weekly Update this month, two cases involving the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline have been decided in the courts.

Chief among those cases was Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. Dakota Access. In that case, a district court held that the Dakota Access pipeline could continue to operate while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers corrects deficiencies in its environmental assessment for the project.

Tribes and Native villages are demonstrating reinvigorated environmental activism as they face increased pressures on natural resource use. Consequently, some of the most significant new developments in environmental law are occurring in Indian country. This month, ELI features a two-part webinar series on “Emerging Environmental Issues in Native Communities.”

Pres. Barack Obama made a number of promises related to environmental justice when he hit the 2008 campaign trail: he said he would strengthen the EPA Office of Environmental Justice, expand the environmental justice small grants program, and empower minority communities to respond to health threats. For the most part, he delivered.

The sage lexicographers at the Oxford Dictionary chose the hyphenated couplet post-truth as the Word of the Year for 2016 — twelve months that saw made-up facts supersede real facts on a daily basis. An analysis by BuzzFeed concluded that “in the final three months of the U.S. presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets” including the New York Times, Washington Post, and 17 others — combined.

Earlier this year, more than a dozen federal agencies produced a new resource document that pulls together methods that they use to evaluate environmental justice (EJ) concerns when preparing environmental analysis of proposed actions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

This new document, Promising Practices for EJ Methodologies in NEPA Reviews (the Promising Practices report), was the product of more than three years of work by a NEPA Committee established by the federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice.

Originally posted on ACOEL's blog.

One of the interesting questions that emerged in the strategic planning process for the Environmental Law Institute is whether ELI could offer more support in the development and/or administration of supplemental environmental projects, or “SEPs”. 

Having played a role in the birthing of the original SEP framework in the early 1990s while at EPA, and through my own experience as a practitioner, I am convinced that penalty mitigation through the performance of SEPs can come as close to a win-win as is possible in the enforcement context. 

I was in the 10th grade when I first heard about the ecological and human health disaster caused by petroleum extraction in Ecuador. A film festival in my hometown showed Crude, a documentary that details the impact of abandoned oil fields near Lago Agrio and the accompanying legal battle. Local populations whose livelihoods and health were allegedly harmed by careless corporate and government actions had been fighting to hold Texaco accountable for cleanup and compensation since 1993. The film, however, focused on several key characters that became involved in the case many years later. There were lawyers (Steven Donzigner and Pablo Fajardo), a corporation (Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001), celebrities (including Sting), and a young and charismatic Presidente (Rafael Correa of Ecuador).

ELI was founded in 1969—a time when U.S. environmental law was in its infancy and needed a place for cultivation and growth (an imperative that is still incredibly relevant today given the interconnectedness and severity of conservation challenges across the globe). At that moment in time, individuals across the country looked around and saw rivers catching on fire, poor air quality making it hard for children to breathe, and unfettered toxic pollution.