Great Lakes Law

The Volkswagen scandal and environmental law – guest post by Karinne Marcolini

The following guest post on the Volkswagen scandal is by Karinne Marcolini, an associate at Goren, Goren & Harris. Karinne is a recent graduate of Wayne Law, where she was president of the Environmental Law Society. While in law school, Karinne worked for the US EPA’s Gasoline Engine Compliance Center in Ann Arbor. She served in the compliance division, applying the Clean Air Act’s mobile-source regulations for vehicles, and thus has significant experience and expertise... Read more →

Students working in Wayne Law’s Transnational Environmental Law Clinic challenging massive highway expansion in midtown Detroit

The following student post is by Patrick Tully (B.A., University of Massachusetts; J.D., Wayne State University Law School, expected 2014). While in law school, Patrick received a Wayne Law public interest fellowship to work with Massachusetts Department of Conservation, Office of the General Counsel. He also interned at the Michigan Court of Appeals and worked a large Michigan law firm, where he will be returning to practice this fall. Patrick was one of the Wayne... Read more →

The U.S. Fuel Economy Standard “Deal” – Guest Post by Professor Brandon Hofmeister, Part 2

Energy law expert Professor Brandon Hofmeister of Wayne Law continues his guest post on the Obama Administration’s announced agreement on consensus fuel economy standards for U.S. cars and light trucks. For background on Professor Hofmeister and the first part of his analysis, see the prior post. Auto Politics Some have suggested that the reason the auto industry agreed to a fairly high standard for fuel economy was that they didn’t want to aggressively pick a... Read more →

The U.S. Fuel Economy Standard “Deal” – Guest Post by Professor Brandon Hofmeister

Buried in the national news about the debt ceiling fiasco during the last week of July was an announcement that the Obama Administration had reached an agreement with the State of California and a number of automakers on consensus fuel economy standards for U.S. cars and light trucks. These new standards will cover cars and light trucks for Model Years 2017-2025, requiring performance equivalent to 54.5 mpg in 2025. As Professor Brandon Hofmeister writes in... Read more →

City of Ann Arbor agrees to environmental study of parking supply in settlement with Great Lakes Environmental Law Center

Last year, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center sent several letters (May 14, 2009 and May 29, 2009) and eventually filed a complaint in state court over concerns about increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the city of Ann Arbor’s massive new parking structure. The city had completely ignored the potential environmental impacts from building more parking supply, which would likely lead to more cars, more congestion, more air pollution, and more greenhouse... Read more →

US EPA issues finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health and welfare, triggering new regulations under the Clean Air Act

As expected, the US EPA this week took two formal actions finding that: (1) greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare; and (2) greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare. The details of the EPA’s “endangerment findings” are available on the EPA’s climate change regulatory initiatives webpage. These findings have been nearly inevitable ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision in... Read more →

After nearly a decade of legal battles and precedents, controversial coal train project is nixed

Nearly a decade ago, the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corp. (DM&E) tried to build and upgrade a rail line between Wyoming and Minnesota. While I’m usually a big fan of trains, the problem with this project wasn’t the train itself, but what the train would be carrying. By design, it would carry 100 million tons of coal annually from Wyoming’s Powder River Coal Basin to the Midwest, enough to power about 50 average sized... 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 →

Cars and climate change

Making the drastic reduction in greenhouse gas pollution that scientists have determined is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change will require major changes in how we generate and use electricity, design and build homes and offices, and manufacture and move products. It will also require fundamental changes in how we get around every day. Quite simply, we need less polluting cars and we need to drive them less. This means that advocates for solving climate... Read more →

Car free in the Motor City - riding the rails from Ann Arbor to Detroit

Today is the last day of our semester at Wayne Law, so it’s now official – I commuted to Detroit from Ann Arbor for the entire semester without driving a car. No small feat, as we haven’t had a reliable transit system connecting Ann Arbor to Detroit since 1983. That was part of my motivation – I wanted see first-hand what the obstacles are to putting in place a modern, efficient, reliable regional transit system... Read more →

EPA takes major steps towards regulating greenhouse gas pollution

The Obama EPA is moving forward with several major steps towards regulating the greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change. Most significantly, the EPA just announced a proposed endangerment finding for greenhouse gas pollution. The endangerment finding would trigger a new regulatory process for carbon dioxide emissions and other climate change pollutants. (For an overview of the EPA’s endangerment finding, see this internal EPA presentation detailing the process and analysis, and see the EPA's webpage... Read more →

High-Speed Rail for Michigan: We don’t know what we’ve been missing

The following guest post is by Kevin Brubaker, Deputy Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago. Kevin manages the Midwest High-Speed Rail Network Project for the Environmental Law & Policy Center. Their 15 years of advocacy on this important and visionary project are finally paying off, as the Midwest is poised to get help from the federal stimulus program to make high-speed rail in the region a reality. Linking Detroit and other... Read more →