Great Lakes Law

The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism – Guest post by Professor Peter Hammer

The following guest post is by my colleague Professor Peter Hammer, Director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law. In his testimony before the Michigan Civil Rights Commission last week, Professor Hammer offers an explanation of the causes and methods behind the Flint water crisis that goes far deeper than the standard account. (The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism is also available on SSRN.) He explains why and... Read more →

Governor Snyder appoints Jon Allan as director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes

Governor Rick Snyder gets huge kudos for tapping Jon Allan as the next director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes. Jon will succeed Patty Birkholz, a long-time champion of Great Lakes protection who earned a reputation for putting environmental policy before partisan politics. Jon Allan will take a leave of at least one year to serve the state as an “Executive on Loan” from Consumers Energy, where he is currently the director of... Read more →

Oil and Freshwater Don’t Mix: Transnational Regulation of Drilling in the Great Lakes (with a political twist...)

I’ve just published a short article on oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes - Oil and Freshwater Don’t Mix: Transnational Regulation of Drilling in the Great Lakes, 38 Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 303 (2011). The article was presented and published as part of a much larger symposium on the BP Gulf oil blowout and the entire symposium issue is available online. Here’s the abstract: In the wake of the Gulf oil... Read more →

Patty Birkholz appointed director of Michigan’s Office of the Great Lakes

Governor Rick Snyder has just announced that former legislator Patty Birkholz will be appointed director of Michigan’s Office of the Great Lakes. The Office of the Great Lakes was created by the Michigan Legislature in 1985 to provide central leadership on Great Lakes policy issues. Birkholz will succeed Ken DeBeaussaert, who held the position for 8 years in Governor Granholm’s administration. This is fantastic news for Michigan and the Great Lakes. When asked for input... Read more →

The BP Gulf blowout - environmental law and political posturing

I’ll be on FOX Business Network today discussing the likely legal actions in the BP Gulf oil blowout and providing some commentary on the political response from Washington (to view video, cleck here). Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government has launched civil and criminal investigations (see this coverage from the Wall Street Journal with my reaction), but the Attorney General was frustratingly vague on specifics. Here’s my short... 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 →

Michigan to combine environmental quality and natural resource agencies

Governor Granholm has issued an executive order to combine the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Natural Resources into one new agency, to be called the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. The plan is to take effect January 17, 2010. The merger is motivated primarily to save money as the state agencies face a huge budget crises. Environmental regulation and natural resource management obviously go together, and were under the same state agency... Read more →

Can the state of Michigan protect our water and air with a bake sale budget?

While Michigan’s budget situation is still not resolved, the legislature has cut general fund support to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality by 39%. The Department of Environmental Quality is the state agency responsible for protecting Michigan’s water, air, natural resources and public health – although whether they can live up to that responsibility without adequate resources remains to be seen. This is another blow to an agency that already suffers from a lack of... Read more →

Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, joined by local businesses, brings lawsuit against the City of Ann Arbor over greenhouse gas pollution and violations of state Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act

Last week, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center joined with several local businesses in a lawsuit against the City of Ann Arbor over greenhouse gas pollution and other environmental impacts that will result from a massive new underground parking structure. The complaint also includes claims against the City for violating the Michigan Open Meetings Act with secret email deliberations and communications regarding the proposed $50 million parking structure. Further, because the City refused to disclose... Read more →

President Obama taps Great Lakes advocate Cam Davis to lead Great Lakes restoration program

President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have tapped Cam Davis, most recently President of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, for a position that most people will simply call “Great Lakes Czar.” Officially, Cam has been appointed by Administrator Jackson as Senior Advisor on the Great Lakes. While the position will be with the EPA, Cam will be working with numerous agencies to coordinate and implement the Great Lakes restoration work. This appointment fulfills... Read more →

Congressional talk about water and the Great Lakes, now ranked

Talk may be cheap, but a great new website gives the public quantified data on what Congress is talking about. Capitol Words (“Taking Congress at its Word”) is another innovative project of the Sunlight Foundation, which uses new technologies to make the federal government more open and transparent to the public. Capitol Words aggregates information from the Congressional Record to provide a simple indicator of what words (and issues) Congress is focusing on at any... Read more →

Environmental law and policy highlights of Obama’s first 100 days

George W. Bush spent 8 years in the White House undermining environmental protection, eventually leaving office with the worst environmental record of any modern president. His regulatory rollbacks and refusal to enforce environmental laws were most immediately apparent, but history will judge him even more harshly for his total lack of leadership in meeting the national and global clean energy / climate change challenge. President Obama could have come into office and done nothing more... Read more →

Pollution of drinking water is America’s top environmental concern

According to a recent Gallup poll, pollution of drinking water is America’s #1 environmental concern. The rest of the top four environmental concerns also relate to water protection - pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs (#2), water and soil contamination from toxic waste (#3), and maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water for household needs (#4). All of these water concerns polled much higher than the other issues of air pollution, loss of tropical... Read more →