Great Lakes Law

Supreme Court will hear a second Clean Water Act case next term and decide if mining waste can be dumped in lakes and streams as “fill”

The Supreme Court will hear a second Clean Water Act case next term and decide if mining waste can be dumped into lakes and streams as “fill.” A mining company, Coeur Alaska, sought permission to dispose of waste from its Kensington Gold Mine into nearby Lower Slate Lake. However, Coeur Alaska contended that its waste was “fill” and not “pollution.” Thus, it claimed that discharge of the mining waste was only subject to section 404... Read more →

Going to court over Canada-US transboundary water disputes

Canada and the United States share a 5,000 mile border that includes over a hundred rivers and lakes, including four of the five Great Lakes (Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario; Lake Michigan is entirely within US jurisdiction, although it is really the same hydrologic body as Lake Huron). The US and Canada have a long history dating back to the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty of cooperatively managing and protecting their shared waters. Historically, the... Read more →

US EPA issues final rule exempting water transfers from Clean Water Act regulation

As expected, the U.S. EPA has issued its final rule exempting water transfers from Clean Water Act regulation. Federal regulation of water transfers and conveyances has been a contentious issue for several years. This is due, in part, to the ongoing myth that while the federal government manages water quality pursuant to the Clean Water Act, water quantity and supply management is left exclusively to the states. Of course these old adages are no longer... Read more →

Under court order, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program releases comprehensive Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the U.S.

It took an extra few years and a court order, but the U.S. Climate Change Science Program finally released its comprehensive Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the U.S. Back in 1990, Congress recognized that access to the best available scientific information is critical in making climate change policy when it passed the Global Change Research Act. The law created the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and directed it to prepare every... Read more →