{"title":"World Mineral Exploration: Trends and Economic Issues World Mineral Exploration: Trends and Economic Issues","authors":"Albert M. Church","doi":"10.5860/choice.26-1541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.26-1541","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71031539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency that provides Las Vegas with water, is in the process of building a massive water pipeline from the eastern-central part of Nevada to Las Vegas. This pipeline is a nearly-unprecedented feat of engineering and water distribution, and stands to move over 27 million gallons of water a year. Once completed, the pipeline will be one of the largest of its kind in human history. If the state of Nevada authorizes a state authority to go forward with this project, it would help solve a serious water supply problem for its largest population center at the expense of diminished water for existing rural users. Can the state freely reallocate water within its borders? More fundamentally, what powers and rights does the state have over water within its territorial boundaries with respect to its private citizens, neighboring states, and federal government? Nevada, by statute, has declared that “[t]he water of all sources of water supply within the boundaries of the State whether above or beneath the surface of the ground, belongs to the public.” As the waters of Nevada belong to the public, the state can regulate water use (police power), protect water resources for the public (public trust doctrine), and go to court on behalf of the public’s interest in water (parens patriae). These sovereign powers and rights give the state considerable control and even some duties over its water, but they do not amount to ownership. The state of Nevada is a sovereign with respect to its water, but not a property owner, and it can’t allocate, dispose, or protect its water as it would a state building or vehicle. But what if a similar proposal were floated in a different state facing water allocation challenges, such as Wyoming. Wyoming’s constitution provides: “The water of all natural streams, springs, lakes or other collections of still water, within the boundaries of the state, are hereby declared to be the property of the state.” This self-declaration of water ownership sounds like it gives the state fundamentally different rights over water. It suggests that the state has a proprietary power over all water within its territory. Perhaps the state could allocate and reallocate water to private users, denying water use at will. Further, if the water is simply state property, it can sell it off, hoard and store it for future speculative uses, or simply give it away when politically convenient. And if Wyoming owns the water within its borders, can it demand that its neighbors’ water use have no physical transboundary impacts, essentially drawing a property line through the water cycle?
{"title":"Waters of the State","authors":"Joseph Regalia, Noah D. Hall","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3193179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3193179","url":null,"abstract":"The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency that provides Las Vegas with water, is in the process of building a massive water pipeline from the eastern-central part of Nevada to Las Vegas. This pipeline is a nearly-unprecedented feat of engineering and water distribution, and stands to move over 27 million gallons of water a year. Once completed, the pipeline will be one of the largest of its kind in human history. \u0000If the state of Nevada authorizes a state authority to go forward with this project, it would help solve a serious water supply problem for its largest population center at the expense of diminished water for existing rural users. Can the state freely reallocate water within its borders? More fundamentally, what powers and rights does the state have over water within its territorial boundaries with respect to its private citizens, neighboring states, and federal government? Nevada, by statute, has declared that “[t]he water of all sources of water supply within the boundaries of the State whether above or beneath the surface of the ground, belongs to the public.” As the waters of Nevada belong to the public, the state can regulate water use (police power), protect water resources for the public (public trust doctrine), and go to court on behalf of the public’s interest in water (parens patriae). These sovereign powers and rights give the state considerable control and even some duties over its water, but they do not amount to ownership. The state of Nevada is a sovereign with respect to its water, but not a property owner, and it can’t allocate, dispose, or protect its water as it would a state building or vehicle. \u0000But what if a similar proposal were floated in a different state facing water allocation challenges, such as Wyoming. Wyoming’s constitution provides: “The water of all natural streams, springs, lakes or other collections of still water, within the boundaries of the state, are hereby declared to be the property of the state.” This self-declaration of water ownership sounds like it gives the state fundamentally different rights over water. It suggests that the state has a proprietary power over all water within its territory. Perhaps the state could allocate and reallocate water to private users, denying water use at will. Further, if the water is simply state property, it can sell it off, hoard and store it for future speculative uses, or simply give it away when politically convenient. And if Wyoming owns the water within its borders, can it demand that its neighbors’ water use have no physical transboundary impacts, essentially drawing a property line through the water cycle?","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"59 1","pages":"59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2018-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46522919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Plastic Water: The Social and Material Life of Bottled Water, by Gay Hawkins, Emily Potter, and Kane Race","authors":"James Johnson","doi":"10.5860/choice.194772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.194772","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"57 1","pages":"321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49553498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wolves, Courts, and Public Policy: The Children of the Night Return to the Northern Rocky Mountains","authors":"Mark Peralta-Silva","doi":"10.5860/choice.191683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.191683","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"56 1","pages":"251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71028970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Science of Open Spaces: Theory and Practice for Conserving Large Complex Systems","authors":"Richard Moore","doi":"10.5860/choice.193657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.193657","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"56 1","pages":"249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71029435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s largest appellate court, with jurisdiction over fifteen judicial districts and 61 million people — almost 20 percent of the nation’s population — spans from Alaska to Arizona, from Montana to Hawaii. The Ninth Circuit has a reputation for being an environmentally sensitive court, but the court is as diverse as the terrain over which it has jurisdiction. Due to its size, the court’s en banc reviews do not include all twenty-nine judges but instead only panels of eleven. Thus, en banc panels can reflect the kind of diversity of opinion they aim to reduce. Recently, the two en banc decisions discussed in this article — Lands Council v. McNair and Karuk Tribe of California v. U.S. Forest Service — displayed the court’s apparently schizophrenic approach to review of agency environmental decision-making. A unanimous court in Lands Council called for more deference to Forest Service decisions favoring timber harvests, while the Karuk Tribe majority, with barely a reference to Lands Council, gave close scrutiny to the Forest Service’s interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. The latter decision prompted a bitter dissent from the author of Lands Council, Judge Milan Smith, that seemed more of a political diatribe than legal criticism and may have been aimed at attracting the attention of the Supreme Court. Although the varying results of the two cases can be reconciled, we think that they epitomize a deep philosophical rift within the court on environmental issues, and we include an appendix suggesting to litigators on which side of the environmental divide certain Ninth Circuit judges may fall.
{"title":"Lands Council, Karuk Tribe , and the Great Environmental Divide in the Ninth Circuit","authors":"M. Blumm, M. Hall","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2246917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2246917","url":null,"abstract":"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s largest appellate court, with jurisdiction over fifteen judicial districts and 61 million people — almost 20 percent of the nation’s population — spans from Alaska to Arizona, from Montana to Hawaii. The Ninth Circuit has a reputation for being an environmentally sensitive court, but the court is as diverse as the terrain over which it has jurisdiction. Due to its size, the court’s en banc reviews do not include all twenty-nine judges but instead only panels of eleven. Thus, en banc panels can reflect the kind of diversity of opinion they aim to reduce. Recently, the two en banc decisions discussed in this article — Lands Council v. McNair and Karuk Tribe of California v. U.S. Forest Service — displayed the court’s apparently schizophrenic approach to review of agency environmental decision-making. A unanimous court in Lands Council called for more deference to Forest Service decisions favoring timber harvests, while the Karuk Tribe majority, with barely a reference to Lands Council, gave close scrutiny to the Forest Service’s interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. The latter decision prompted a bitter dissent from the author of Lands Council, Judge Milan Smith, that seemed more of a political diatribe than legal criticism and may have been aimed at attracting the attention of the Supreme Court. Although the varying results of the two cases can be reconciled, we think that they epitomize a deep philosophical rift within the court on environmental issues, and we include an appendix suggesting to litigators on which side of the environmental divide certain Ninth Circuit judges may fall.","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"54 1","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68028180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1918, Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) to curb mass avian extermination caused by hunting and poaching. Despite Congress’s initial concern with these activities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) expanded the scope of MBTA enforcement to include bird deaths caused by industrial activities. This created a glaring split of authority among U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, with one side applying strict liability under the MBTA for all deaths of protected birds caused by industrial activities and the other side refusing to apply the MBTA to indirect and unintentional bird deaths. This article argues that the best solution would be for Congress or the FWS to establish an incidental take permit program that would exempt industrial operators from prosecution for certain indirect, unintentional bird deaths caused by industrial activities. Such a program would provide the best balance between the MBTA’s conservation principles and the reality of vital and growing industrial operations. A permit program would provide industrial operators with certainty concerning liability and project planning, and provide the FWS with a tool to fund and ensure conservation of migratory birds, while still allowing the FWS to prosecute those failing to obtain a permit or violating the Act in another way.
{"title":"Migrating Towards an Incidental Take Permit Program: Overhauling the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to Comport with Modern Industrial Operations","authors":"Alexander K. Obrecht","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2273086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2273086","url":null,"abstract":"In 1918, Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) to curb mass avian extermination caused by hunting and poaching. Despite Congress’s initial concern with these activities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) expanded the scope of MBTA enforcement to include bird deaths caused by industrial activities. This created a glaring split of authority among U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, with one side applying strict liability under the MBTA for all deaths of protected birds caused by industrial activities and the other side refusing to apply the MBTA to indirect and unintentional bird deaths. This article argues that the best solution would be for Congress or the FWS to establish an incidental take permit program that would exempt industrial operators from prosecution for certain indirect, unintentional bird deaths caused by industrial activities. Such a program would provide the best balance between the MBTA’s conservation principles and the reality of vital and growing industrial operations. A permit program would provide industrial operators with certainty concerning liability and project planning, and provide the FWS with a tool to fund and ensure conservation of migratory birds, while still allowing the FWS to prosecute those failing to obtain a permit or violating the Act in another way.","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"54 1","pages":"107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2139/SSRN.2273086","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68050677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935, by Donald J. Pisani","authors":"J. Walton","doi":"10.5860/choice.40-5202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.40-5202","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"45 1","pages":"509"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71095983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Desert Ecology: An Introduction to Life in the Arid Southwest, by John Sowell","authors":"R. Brusca","doi":"10.5860/choice.39-1555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.39-1555","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46149,"journal":{"name":"Natural Resources Journal","volume":"42 1","pages":"686"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71088307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}