Expect Significant Changes to Environmental Law Next Term
The Recorder
Friday, December 7, 2012
The Obama administration is expected to advance major changes to energy and environmental laws in the next four years. There is already a backlog of pending legislation and proposed regulation to work through, and both environmental and industry groups will press for major reforms.
Litigation Over Groundwater Impacts of Natural Gas Wells
The Legal Intelligencer
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson in Harrisburg denied a request for a Lone Pine order in a natural gas migration case, Roth v. Cabot Oil & Gas, Civil Action No. 3:12-cv-898 (M.D. Pa. Oct. 15, 2012). That decision offers an opportunity to consider some issues arising from claims that shale gas development (fracking) in Pennsylvania has caused personal injury or property damage as the result of contamination of neighbors' water wells or other migration of natural gas to neighbors' property.
Hurricane Sandy and Environmental Stewardship
The Legal Intelligencer
Friday, November 9, 2012
During the last week of October, the National Weather Service made increasingly alarming predictions about the path of Hurricane Sandy. After causing deaths and severe property damage in Haiti and Cuba, the Frankenstorm, as some called this Halloween-week hurricane, was expected to travel up the Atlantic coast of the United States.
Institutional Controls and Pre-Enforcement Review in Cleanup Cases
The Legal Intelligencer
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
On September 4, the Environmental Hearing Board decided a motion in limine in Barron v. Department of Environmental Protection, EHB No. 2011-142-L, that highlights issues presented by the intersection of the bar on pre-enforcement review under, in that case, the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act (HSCA), Pa. Stat. Ann. tit. 35, §§6020.101 to .1305, and reliance on "institutional controls."
Real Estate Development Projects and the PUC
The Legal Intelligencer
Friday, October 12, 2012
The nature of a particular utility service as private or public is an issue that comes up from time to time in the context of certain development projects. The distinction is important because the implication when falling on the public side of the line is that public utilities are subject to regulation by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, whereas private utility services are not.
Administrative Action: Must There Be Noncompliance to Get a Court Order?
The Legal Intelligencer
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Earlier this month, the Commonwealth Court issued an unpublished opinion affirming a contempt order in a Pennsylvania Safe Drinking Water Act case, Department of Environmental Protection v. Peckham.
