News & Insights

On the evening of the second inauguration of President Trump, the White House released a flurry of executive orders on a wide range of subjects. Several of them specifically concerned energy and the environment. The general thrust of these is to encourage the rapid development of fossil fuel resources and all associated infrastructure, and remove […]

With the incoming Trump administration poised for an attack on federal environmental regulations, states are quickly emerging with actions on climate change. On December 26, 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the “Climate Change Superfund Act” (the “Climate Superfund Act” or the “Act”), which seeks to impose retroactive fees on fossil fuel […]

Happy new year, ACOEL colleagues and friends!  Following (nearly) four years in the Biden Administration serving as Associate Administrator for Policy at EPA, I am happy to be back in my teaching role at Georgetown University Law Center as a Professor from Practice on the full-time faculty. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity […]

The Diamond Alkali Superfund Site in Newark, New Jersey, which includes the 17-mile Lower Passaic River Study Area, may be one of the most expensive and hotly contested Superfund Sites in the country.  The remedy for the dioxin-contaminated river may cost as much as $2 billion by the time it is completed. The Newark site […]

Last week, in what almost certainly has to be the most fractured appellate decision in the history of the United States courts, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, affirmed via per curiam decision the 2021 District Court judgment in Environment Texas Citizen Lobby v. ExxonMobil Corporation.  Seventeen judges sat en banc. Nine […]

Let me state this at the outset. I am a lifelong ACLU Liberal Democrat who has never voted for a Republican. Thus, the results of the election on November 5th put me in a deep funk. Nothing that has happened since that time, whether it be comments by President-elect Trump, or his nominations for cabinet […]

Back in 2003, Michael Herz and I wrote an article calling for the creation of an online, word searchable database of environmental impact statements that had been prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its state equivalents. These EISs are written at great expense and contain massive amounts of observational data about air […]

December 3, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the worst industrial accident in history.  Explosions at a pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India, released deadly methyl isocyanate into the night air, killing thousands of people instantly and injuring hundreds of thousands more.  The plant was owned by Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), a company majority-owned […]

The American College of Environmental Lawyers is proud to announce its newly elected Officers and Regents. Learn about our 2024-2025 Officers.

Many ACOEL members have served or are serving in the Federal government either as career civil servants or as political appointees. All of us know many federal employees at EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies. We regularly work with them. They are […]

Congress should amend one word in the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (“APA”) in order to save the entire oil and gas industry in the western United States and the federal government’s and western state’s coffers.  Litigation and judicial interpretation of this one word has frozen the federal oil and gas leasing program, impacting permits […]

On October 4, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court denied requests from states and industry groups to block the implementation of two Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) rules. The decisions did not include reasoning behind declining the stay requests. Both orders were unsigned and did not include recorded dissents. As a result of the denials, the methane […]