This two credit survey course focuses on the legal issues that arise in the context of efforts to conserve and regulate the use of public lands, wildlife and wildlife habitat, water resources, and wetlands. These issues include, among others, competing claims of the "public interest" versus private property rights; the roles of administrative agencies and the judiciary in environmental decision making; tensions presented by the multiple use/sustainable yield standard in federal law; conflicts among and between local, state, and federal approaches to natural resource regulation; and the opposing goals of resource management espoused by commercial interests, oil, gas, and mining companies, environmentalists, native populations and local communities, and recreational users. These issues will be developed in the context of the impacts of energy production and transport - oil and gas drilling and transportation, wind and solar power production, electric power transmission, and coal mining. The course will explore the regulatory schemes embodied in the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Surface Resources (Mining) Act, as well as the various statutes that govern federal public lands, such as the Wilderness Act and Federal Land Policy Management Act. Finally, the course will cover environmental standards applicable to oil and gas exploration in other countries and international standards that govern the transport of oil in international waters.
Taylor, Melinda E.