City Broke Law Not Letting Public Comment on School Built on Contaminated Land

Know what a brownfield is? It’s land that’s been contaminated, usually by some sort of industrial activity like, say, making steel.

New York City just got told by the the state’s court of appeals that it broke the law when it failed to give the public adequate time to comment on a school in the Bronx built on a brownfield.

You’ll find the whole story from DNA Info here.

Remember: it’s often what you don’t know that’ll hurt you.

Is There a Time When Environmental Laws Should NOT Be Followed?

This may surprise you but Earth Preservers thinks that sometimes it’s okay to break a law intended to protect the environment.

We didn’t think so until we read about a recent bill passed by the US House of Representatives.

After India experienced the largest power blackout ever, the House passed a bill designed to prevent a similar thing from happening in the US. The bill basically says to the people we entrust to keep the lights on that you should do whatever it takes to prevent a major blackout, even if that means running the power system in a way that breaks environmental laws.

The reasoning behind the bill is that, when America faces the sort of emergency that a massive blackout would cause, public health and safety trump protecting the environment. The bill the House passed protects the electric power industry from being sued for breaking environmental laws in a power emergency.

Of course, the really tricky part is knowing what environmental laws can be broken under what circumstances. Can you think of another example where breaking an environmental law might be the right thing to do?

To learn more about the House bill, read this article on Fuel Fix.

‘Light Pollution’ Leads to Lawsuit in Hawaii

People living near the Malibu High School stadium in Hawaii are going to court to prevent the installation of permanent field lights, arguing in part that the lights will cause “light pollution.”

While air and water pollution are well known, light and noise pollution are two other kinds of environmental pollution you may not have heard of.

Whether they are legitimate forms of pollution is in the eye of the beholder.
Some people have recently sued developers of giant wind farms because the noise the blades of a wind turbine make as they rotate allegedly gives them headaches and causes other maladies.
Some legal experts think noise pollution is just an excuse for going to court to prevent a wind farm being built that could lower the property values of people who live nearby. Experts think the same thing about light pollution.

What do you think? Are noise and light pollution legitimate forms of pollution?
To learn more about the Malibu situation, read this Malibu Times article.

Is Washington Ignoring Its Responsibility Under the Endangered Species Act?

When you can’t trust the government to enforce laws that protect endangered species, what hope is there for endangered species?

That’s the underlying question of a lawsuit reportedly just brought by The Center for Environmental Accuracy and Reliability (CESAR) against the US Fish & Wildlife Service. The suit alleges that Fish & Wildlife has failed to follow through on its legal obligation under the Endangered Species Act to decide whether to declare the American eel a “threatened” species. As a result, alleges CESAR, the American eel is now being pushed dangerously close to extinction by loss of habitat and other factors.

To be sure, as newspapers and TV commentators keep telling us, there are a lot of things that don’t get done on time in Washington. But most don’t involve the future of a species. Isn’t that kind of important?

To learn more, read this article from Courthouse News.

What’s More Valuable: Green Power Or an Area’s Pristine Environment?

Have you heard the old expression ‘There’s a time and a place for everything’? Well, plenty of people at a recent hearing of Vermont’s Public Service Board said that putting wind towers on pristine Hawk Rock would be the wrong place, destroying the area’s natural beauty.

Interesting dilemma here: how much is it worth having green power? Is it worth messing up the natural beauty of the environment?
In the end, the people were told that their objections didn’t matter. The only thing the Board was there to discuss was the project’s potential impact on the bears and falcons in the area. The Board said it was just doing its job under the law. As the Burlington (Vermont) Free-Press headline put it: “Residents’ heartfelt words mean little in wind-tower approval process.”
If you had been at that hearing, would you have been for or against putting wind towers on Hawk Rock?

To learn more, read the Burlington Free Press story.