Jobs v. Wilderness? NEPA’s Role in Enforcing (Other) Environmental Laws

Jamison Colburn Army Corps of Engineers, mining, segmentation , , ,

The proposed Montanore mine in northwest Montana is a combined copper/silver behemoth, aimed at extracting some 12½ thousand tons of ore per day—virtually all of it from beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness (CMW). This sort of mining is a dirty affair and the tailings and other wastes are a major concern in this project. (See […]

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FERC, Programmatic Analysis and the Shale Gas Boom Going Bust

Jamison Colburn action agencies, fracking, pipelines, segmentation, uncategorized , , ,

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the successor-agency to one of the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) principal catalysts, the now-defunct Federal Power Commission (FPC).  The FPC was renowned for its ham-handed exclusion of environmentalists and other intervenors as it was licensing dams and other hydro projects in the 1960s.  So recalcitrant and cozy […]

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The Claims Against USFS’s Pipeline CATX Rejected by District Court

Jamison Colburn dredge and fill, pipelines, segmentation ,

The Sierra Club’s lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s grant of a special use permit to the “Line 5” pipeline traversing Michigan (and parts of the Huron-Manistee National Forest) was dismissed by the district  court on September 30.  As our story on the suit noted, the pipeline’s been in service since 1953.  Admittedly, then, the permit […]

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By a “Hairsbreadth” or a Hectare?

Jamison Colburn action agencies, segmentation, uncategorized , , , , , ,

The Flanagan South Pipeline (FSP) was in the news for a while.  Proposed in 2011 and built in under two years, the first oil flowed through it in December 2014.  Enbridge, the owner of the pipeline, purportedly spent over $2.6B on its construction.  At almost 600 miles from Flanagan, Illinois, to Cushing, Oklahoma (traversing Missouri […]

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