In February 2012, Pennsylvania adopted comprehensive revisions to its Oil and Gas Act known as “Act 13.”  Among the changes was an expanded preemption of local regulation of oil and gas activities. Prior law prohibited municipalities from regulating “how” oil and gas development would proceed, but permitted zoning control over “where” development could occur. Act…

As Michael Cooke noted in his post the following day, on June 3 EPA proposed its “Clean Power Plan” that EPA estimates would, if adopted and implemented, cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing electricity generating units by 30% from 2005 levels.  79 Fed. Reg. 34,829 (June 18, 2014).  A few weeks later, as Mike…

This month’s column in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly addresses the contamination risk faced by charities that accept donated land.  I particularly treat the problem of charities whose very purpose calls for them to accept environmentally suspect property.  Perhaps it has been a vacant lot subject to fly dumping.  Perhaps the charity is specifically intended to locate in…

My column this month in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly takes on the challenging problem of communicating science from high school, even middle school in environmental matters.  One would think that it would be easy.  But some of these kinds of things are hard for courts, regulators, businesses, and the press:

• scientific induction requires hypothesis testing

…

If you have a Superfund cleanup obligation, you may want to collect on insurance (if you have any) and also to seek contribution from others responsible for the Site.  What happens to the contribution claim when you collect on the insurance?  In most Superfund matters, the parties have simply ignored insurance recoveries.  However, in those…

The recent decision in Bitler Investment Venture II v. Marathon Petroleum, No. 12-3722 (7th Cir. Jan. 27, 2014)(Posner, J.), offered an opportunity to consider claims for common law waste in this month’s Pennsylvania Law Weekly column.  Common law waste provides a claim by a lessor or a remainderman against a lessee or a…

Robinson Twp. v. Commonwealth, No. 63 MAP 2012 (Pa. Dec. 19, 2013), upended a lot of what we thought we knew about the Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution, Pa. Const. art. I, § 27.  My January column in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly / Legal Intelligencer addresses that aspect of the decision, one that…