Great Lakes Law

Detroit Enacts New Ordinance to Protect Residents From Dust Pollution

Guest post by Great Lakes Environmental Law Center staff attorney Nick Leonard. On a summer day in July of 2013, a dangerous dark cloud of dust blew along the Detroit River between Windsor, Canada and Detroit. Video captured by an individual showed several people standing along the riverfront transfixed by the dust cloud as it completely obscured their view of the Ambassador Bridge, a normally omnipresent visual landmark for Detroit and Windsor residents alike. The... Read more →

The Refined State: Tar Sands, Pet Coke, and the Front Lines of Great Lakes Oil Cities

The Freshwater Lab, a program of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has hosted a year-long series exploring the oil-water mix in the Great Lakes. Next Tuesday, April 19, is the final event, titled The Refined State: Tar Sands, Pet Coke, and the Front Lines of Great Lakes Oil Cities. I’m very excited to be presenting (thanks Rachel Havrelock for organizing and inviting me) and will discuss our region’s... Read more →

Lee Paddock visiting Wayne Law Thursday October 22, 2015 to discuss fracking and environmental law enforcement

Wayne Law’s Environmental Law Society and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center are honored to host a visit from Lee Paddock, Associate Dean for Environmental Law Studies at George Washington University Law School, this Thursday October 22 at 12:10 (Room 2249). His public talk will focus on hydraulic fracturing regulation, citizen enforcement, and corporate enforcement of supply chain requirements. I’ve known Lee for nearly 15 years, dating back to our days with the Minnesota Center... Read more →

Paris Preview: How the New Global Climate Agreement is Shaping Up

Wayne Law is honored to host Elliot Diringer, Executive Vice President for the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, D.C. He will be sharing insights on the upcoming negotiations on a new global climate change agreement. In December, world leaders will gather in Paris to negotiate an agreement to limit greenhouse gas pollution. Mr. Diringer offers an optimistic behind the scenes look at the Paris talks, previewing the policy issues and global politics... Read more →

Petcoke on the Detroit River – a tar sands byproduct threatens local public health and Great Lakes water

In the early spring of 2012, a black pile three stories high and as large as many of the surrounding buildings appeared along the shores of the Detroit River. This pile was made up of petroleum coke, or “petcoke,” a byproduct created by the process of transforming heavy tar sands oil into useable fuel. While petcoke is not traditionally burned in the United States, competitive markets exist for petcoke in the developing world. This pile’s... Read more →

Wayne Law student wins Environmental Law Institute’s Beveridge & Diamond writing competition for paper on state energy policy and the dormant commerce clause

Paul Stewart, a second-year student at Wayne State University Law School, has won the Environmental Law Institute’s national 2013-14 Beveridge & Diamond Constitutional Environmental Law Writing Competition. His winning entry, The Overlooked Vulnerabilities of State-Level Greenhouse Gas Regulations Under Pike Balancing and Possibilities for Addressing Those Vulnerabilities, assesses the viability of state regulations on greenhouse gas emissions in the face of legal challenges under the Dormant Commerce Clause, a legal doctrine that restricts states from... Read more →

New book announcement - Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections

My new book, Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections, has been published by Foundation Press and is available on Amazon. I was honored to work with two superb co-authors on this book - Robert Adler, Interim Dean and James I. Farr Chair in Law, and Robin Kundis Craig, William H. Leary Professor of Law, both at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public... Read more →

Anatomy of an oil spill – federal report on the Enbridge pipeline disaster that polluted the Kalamazoo River

“On Sunday, July 25, 2010, at 5:58 p.m., eastern daylight time, a segment of a 30-inch-diameter pipeline (Line 6B), owned and operated by Enbridge Incorporated (Enbridge) ruptured in a wetland in Marshall, Michigan. The rupture occurred during the last stages of a planned shutdown and was not discovered or addressed for over 17 hours. During the time lapse, Enbridge twice pumped additional oil (81 percent of the total release) into Line 6B during two startups;... Read more →

Second annual Great Lakes Environmental Law Symposium in Chicago to focus on coal plants, alternative energy, and Canadian oil sands

The second annual Great Lakes Environmental Law Symposium, presented by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law in cooperation with the Chicago Park District, will be held Friday, March 30 at the law school in Chicago. The program begins at noon, and John W. Rowe, chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corporation and chairman of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Board of Trustees, will deliver the keynote address. The annual environmental law symposium brings together... 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 →

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 →

Property rights in wind – lessons from Texas oil, gas, and water law

Alan Alexander, a former student who continues to work with me on several projects, has just published a superb note, “The Texas Wind Estate: Wind as a Natural Resource and a Severable Property Interest.” Looking at Texas, a historic leader in energy law, the note draws lessons from management of other resources such as oil, gas, and water in proposing legal reforms for property rights in wind. This is an increasingly important area of the... Read more →