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Cost-Benefit Analysis at the Supreme Court: Cooling Water v. Fish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Julie A. Hewitt
Julie A. Hewitt*
Affiliation:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C.
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Abstract

This is the story of a recent U.S. Supreme Court case on the use of cost-benefit analysis at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a regulation issued under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The case is Entergy Corp. v.Riverkeeper, Inc., et al. The case was not about the quality of the cost-benefit analysis, nor the fact that EPA conducted one, but whether EPA had CWA authority to base regulatory decisions on cost-benefit. I close with thoughts about an alternative Chevron legal test that acknowledges the state of ecosystem valuation.

Keywords

regulatory analysisecological benefitsChevron test
Type
Invited Papers
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , October 2009 , pp. 83 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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