Thursday, April 14, 2011

Green Page: Environmental Law News - April 14, 2011

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April 14, 2011 FindLaw.com Environment Law Newsletter

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ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS:

CALIF. SETS NATION'S HIGHEST RENEWABLE POWER GOALS
(AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation requiring California utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources, giving the state the most aggressive alternative energy mandate in the U.S. California utilities and other electricity providers have until the end of 2020 to draw 33 percent of their power from solar panels, windmills and other renewable sources. Brown signed the bill Tuesday at a solar panel manufacturing plant near San Jose.

FRACKING SHALE FOR GAS BRINGS WEALTH, CONCERNS
(AP) - Hydraulic fracturing is a drilling process that blasts millions of gallons of water for each well deep into the earth to fracture dense shale and allow natural gas to escape. The water is mixed with sand and chemicals - some of them toxic, some carcinogenic. The fracking liquid gushes back with natural underground brine, a brew now intensely salty and containing barium, strontium and radium from the earth.

TEXAS BATTLING WILDFIRES FUELED BY HEAT, WIND
(AP) - Out-of-control wildfires in Texas have scorched nearly 400 square miles and destroyed dozens of homes as hot, windy conditions fuel the blazes. One fast-moving wildfire in West Texas had spread to more than 60,000 acres Sunday in Jeff Davis County and destroyed about 40 homes in Fort Davis before it raged north and east.

CLOTH OR DISPOSABLES? HALF-CENTURY DEBATE STILL ON
(AP) - Disposables, cloth. Cloth, disposables. Fifty years after Procter & Gamble introduced affordable throwaway diapers, dubbing them Pampers, the battle over baby's bottom rages on. The brand brought on a revolution in baby care, obliterating safety pins, soaking pails and diaper delivery trucks. But reusables have been slowly inching back into the mainstream, with the predictable faceoff among parents choosing one or the other - though some families use both.

'UNUSUAL EVENT' DECLARED AT WASH. NUCLEAR PLANT
(AP) - A spokesman for a Washington nuclear power plant says a small amount of hydrogen gas ignited in a six-inch flame Thursday when workers cut into the pipe. Columbia Generating Station declared an "unusual event," evacuated plant areas near the pipe for about 90 minutes, and notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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ANIMALS:

WOLF PROTECTIONS EXPECTED TO BE LIFTED BY CONGRESS
(AP) - An attachment in the federal budget bill that takes gray wolves off the endangered species list across most of the Northern Rockies would keep protections intact in Wyoming, at least for now. Wildlife advocates conceded Tuesday that the wolf provision was all but certain to pass. Congress faces a tight deadline on a budget plan already months overdue. That means wolf hunting would resume this fall in Idaho and Montana.

RUSSIA BANS ENDANGERED POLAR BEAR HUNT THIS YEAR
(AP) - Russia has banned the hunting of polar bears this year, thanks to a group with close ties to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a longtime defender of large endangered animals. A Russian-U.S. commission last year agreed to restrict polar bear hunting to 29 animals per year for each country. But The Polar Bear program, established under Putin's patronage, said this week that Russia had waived its quota for bear hunting.

RECENT CASE SUMMARIES:

GARDNER V. US BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, 09-35647
(U.S. 9th Cir.) - In action for declaratory and injunctive relief to compel the defendant to prohibit off-road vehicle use on a mountain trail under its care, summary judgment in favor of defendant is affirmed because the defendant was not required to make a finding that the use of off-road vehicle caused considerable adverse effects to trail and where denial of petition on the matter by defendant was not arbitrary and capricious.

KARUK TRIBE V. US FORESTRY SERV., 05-16801
(U.S. 9th Cir.) - In a dispute brought by a tribe involving mining in the Klamath River and alleging violations of Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. section 1536(a)(2), summary judgment by district court that a decision permitting a mining operation to proceed on the sole basis of a Notice of Intent (NOI) is affirmed because the NOI process does not constitute an agency action as defined under the ESA, such that an interagency consultation is mandatory.


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