Great Lakes Law

Beyond bottled water - review of the movie TAPPED

I was given the opportunity to review the new movie Tapped just before its release by Bullfrog Films. The movie is now out on DVD and available for screening, and I highly recommend it. For starters, I really enjoyed watching this film (and I watch a lot of movies). The production was fantastic – not surprising since it’s the same folks that made Who Killed the Electric Car? I especially loved the soundtrack (being from... Read more →

ABA Eastern Water Resources Conference in Orlando, Florida

I’m in sunny and hot Orlando, Florida today for the American Bar Association’s biennial Eastern Water Resources Conference. The theme is “Surplus and Scarcity: Adapting to Hydrologic Disruption in the East” and as always, there is a fantastic line-up of speakers and topics discussing state water planning and regulation, water economics, and infrastructure. I’m moderating a panel on the water-energy nexus, and my colleague Nick Schroeck is speaking on the interstate compacts panel, discussing the... Read more →

Canadian Feds propose ban on bulk water removals from transboundary waters

Last week, the Canadian federal government proposed legislation to ban bulk water removals from “transboundary waters” – meaning waters that cross the U.S.-Canada boundary. To explain the legislation and how it fits within Canada’s other water protection efforts and challenges, Professor Marcia Valiante of the University of Windsor Faculty of Law generously agreed to author the following the guest post. Prof. Valiante is a leading expert on Canadian environmental law with a special focus on... Read more →

Elena Kagan nominated to Supreme Court

The big legal news this week is President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court of the United States. Elena Kagan has been serving as Solicitor General in the Obama administration (the Solicitor General is the federal government’s designated attorney before the U.S. Supreme Court) and was previously a law professor and Dean of Harvard Law School. By most objective measures, she is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, and while a... Read more →

Coyotes in Detroit – Guest Post by Bill Dodge

When I first heard about coyotes that roam Detroit, it sounded like an urban legend. But like many urban legends in Detroit, the tales of coyotes are very much real. To learn more, a friend connected me with Bill Dodge, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Wayne State University. Bill is studying the ecology of coyotes in urban areas of southeastern Michigan. The primary focus of his research is (1) to... Read more →

Michigan House passes Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation – learn more at upcoming webinar

Some good policy news to end the week – the Michigan House just passed the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) legislation, House Bill 5640. PACE programs are a voluntary mechanism to finance home energy efficiency and conservation investments, creating green construction jobs while lowering long term home ownership costs and energy use. For a great primer on PACE, see the PACE guest post by Eric Jamison (Eric helped develop the Michigan legislation working with the... Read more →