Articles

Should unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats have free rein to regulate whatever they please?

September 26, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

PLF argues “no,” in an amicus brief supporting four states, industry groups, and an Indian tribe in their challenge to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) unlawful fracking regulation. It purports to regulate all fracking on federal lands based on the potential impacts of fracking to underground drinking water sources, despite t ...

Articles

Court strikes down federal fracking regulations

June 24, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Over on the Federalist Society’s FEDSOC BLOG, I have a post discussing a recent decision from a federal court that federal bureaucrats overstepped their authority when they adopted fracking regulations. In 2005, Congress exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (the primary federal statute intended to protect drinki ...

Articles

Coastal Commission ignores local concerns (again)

May 22, 2014 | By JONATHAN WILLIAMS

Last week, I attended the California Coastal Commission meeting at the Inverness Yacht Club near the Point Reyes Seashore. As usual, the Commission scrutinized a wide variety of issues, some mundane, some unusual. These included: whether wireless antennas on the side of telephone poles destroy view sheds; the racial composition of new hires on the ...

Articles

Fracking leases halted

April 12, 2013 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal of the Northern District of California ruled in Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management that the Bureau violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it failed to produce an environmental impact statement detailing the environmental effects attendant on the lease of some 2,700 acres ...