Two Boston Globe stories I read this weekend on the rapidly shrinking island of Nantucket this weekend are worthy of your attention.
The first story is about EPA's consideration of a plan to intentionally dump 6600...more
The First Circuit Court of Appeals has finally ended the Nantucket Residents Against Turbines' lawsuit against the United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the...more
The Healey-Driscoll Administration's announcement of its ResilientCoasts Initiative garnered a lot of attention, as it should have. If you believe the scientists (and, if you don't, you might as well stop reading here), we...more
Law 360 is reporting this morning on an NGO petition to the Army Corps of Engineers demanding that it not apply a Nationwide Permit covering the construction of "pipelines that transport water, sewage, and ‘other substances’”...more
Our climate emergency has spurred all kinds of innovation around alternatives to the combustion of fossil fuels to generate energy. Today's Boston Globe reports on two different streams of that innovation that couldn't be...more
Those of us on the east coast have heard that the Great Salt Lake has receded to the verge of a public health crisis, including because toxins in the sediment that have been underwater for millennia may soon may soon be...more
The Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, or ACKRat, have asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals to find that the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service acted "arbitrarily and...more
The dog days of summer are apparently seeing the end of NIMBY lawsuits brought by Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard residents; the former seeking to deny us fried clams and soft ice cream and the latter seeking to deny us...more
The Boston Globe reports that the cost of the critically important New England Clean Energy Connect project increased by over 50 percent to 1.5 billion dollars during the three years Avangrid, the project developer, battled...more
The Boston Globe is following the Nantucket Current in reporting on another of the countless casualties of coastal erosion caused by our GHG-supercharged climate. Such reports have become common place over the past several...more
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the time it takes to permit an infrastructure project in these United States and what might be done about it. The average time it takes for National Environmental Policy Act review,...more
The Boston Globe reports that a Maine jury has now determined that the developer of the New England Clean Energy Connect project relied in good faith on Maine's prior approval of the project when it spent nearly a half...more
Seems like just yesterday that the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on New England Clean Energy Connect's challenge to the retroactive initiative petition that might have killed the project to get hydropower from Canada to...more
Yesterday the Nantucket Residents Against Turbines were in Federal Court arguing the merits of their last ditch effort to stop the Vineyard Wind project which has taken ten years to plan and permit. ACKRat's lawsuit is one of...more
Yesterday Maine's Supreme Judicial Court unanimously held that the 2021 referendum that purported to invalidate a lease essential to the New England Clean Energy Connect project violated the Contract Clause of the United...more
A Maine Trial Court Judge has denied New England Clean Energy Connect permission to complete its project to transmit Canadian hydropower to the United States saying that NECEC hadn't demonstrated that it will suffer...more
As the climate crisis continues, we're now on the verge of meeting our energy needs through a combination of water, wind, and sun generated electricity. Sadly many Federal and State permits are needed to get that cleaner...more
Just a few weeks ago the conservative majority of our nation's Supreme Court said that it is up to Congress to authorize what it described as a "seemingly sensible solution" to the fact that our planet is quite literally...more
When Emily Norton, the always ambitious Executive Director of the Charles River Watershed Association, first mentioned the possibility of removing the South Natick Dam a few years ago I thought she was biting off more than...more
One of the most surprising comments I received on my piece last week about the United States Supreme Court getting out of the environmental law making business was that the Court's opinion in West Virginia v. EPA was a...more
For most of my time on this planet, and all of my more than thirty years as an environmental lawyer, the nation's highest court has, with very few exceptions, blessed the United States Environmental Protection Agency's broad...more
Much has already been written about the Supreme Court's decision yesterday to tie EPA's hands in its effort to mitigate the GHG fueled climate catastrophe we face. As we prepare to celebrate the birth of our nation, I'd like...more
This week many eyes are focused on Maine's Supreme Judicial Court which will hear argument on whether Maine voters can effectively cancel Federal and State approvals of the New England Clean Energy Connect project. This...more
Many of you already know that Massachusetts timely meeting its Greenhouse Gas reduction goals is entirely dependent on our ability to receive hydroelectricity generated in Canada, at least until other renewable energy is...more
The collapse of a section of Newport's Cliff Walk has captured our attention. In a Boston Globe report, Dean Greenstein of Roger Williams University puts this newsworthy event in geologic perspective - our planet is...more