Licensing of hydroelectric projects by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under the Federal Power Act (FPA) materially affects stream flows on rivers throughout the nation. Often overlooked, FERC licensing will gain prominence in the next decade as hundreds of projects must be...

This article was an early assessment of the operation and significance of the wetlands protection permit program authorized by section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The article was written five years after the courts had ruled that the jurisdiction of the program was broader than that of program...

This article examines the pioneering Northwest Power Act of 1980, which revolutionized electric power planning in the Northwest and called for a fish and wildlife restoration program to compensate for losses sustained at the hands of Columbia Basin dams. The power plan gave priority to...

The protection of federally owned wild lands, including, designated wilderness areas, has long been a cardinal element of the American character. For a variety of reasons, designating wild lands for protection under the Wilderness Act has proved difficult, increasingly so in recent years. Thus,...

Environmental law usually features statutory interpretation or administrative interpretation by a single agency. Less frequent is a close look at the mechanics of implementing environmental policy across agency lines. In this article, we offer such a look: a comparative analysis of five statutes...

In Alec L. v. McCarthy, an atmospheric trust case, the D.C. Circuit, in an unreflective opinion, rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the public trust doctrine demanded action on the part of the federal government to curb atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. The court relied on dicta in...

Resentment of the federal government's management of public lands runs deep in the arid West, where grazing, mining, and timber once predominated and remain important to rural communities. This resentment bubbled over in 2016 with the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in...

This article, expanding on an earlier essay, 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2985925' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2985925, explains the environmental and economic problems with a congressional bill that would have transferred federal Bureau of Land Management lands managed to the state of Oregon. The...

This edited speech, delivered at a land use conference shortly after the Supreme Court decided Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission in 1992, questioned several premises of the decision and criticized Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court. The essay suggested that the Court lost its way in...

The law and policy of salmon protection and restoration are complex, and matters surrounding salmon implicate topics as varied as Indian treaty fishing rights, dam management and removal, international treaties, predator con­trol, and climate change. Pacific Salmon Law and the Environment...