As this issue of Environmental Practice goes to press, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has put mercury from coal-fired plants into front-page news. The battle seems simple on the surface: USEPA seeks to reverse a decision made in December 2000 that Section 112 of the Clean Air Act would govern these emissions.

This article is part 2 of a two-part series. Part one, which was published in the June 2008 edition of Environmental Practice,1 focused on the context for considering climate change in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses and reviewing the case law and other legal developments on the topic. The article briefly explained the phenomenon of climate change and the key climate change science findings and predictions from the most credible global and United States (US) sources. The article also briefly described some important state and local climate change policy initiatives, and provided an overview of the state of NEPA climate change case law.

Much has been written about the effects of climate change on the environment, particularly on the potential effects of climate change on water resources and their management. Despite that plethora of information on the potential effects of climate change on water resources, little has been written to date on the effects of water and land use projects on climate change.

Rapid assessment of land use change at scales ranging from local to global can provide timely, accurate information about land suitability, supporting infrastructure, and regulatory compliance so that developers, resource managers, planners, and decision makers can make critical decisions in the face of uncertainty. One area of concern regarding land suitability is the presence, extent, and quality of wetlands. Federal and state wetland protection legislation and local ordinances have effectively sought to reduce the amount of wetlands converted to other uses or to mitigate for unavoidable removal of wetlands. Identification and delineation of existing or potential wetlands, as well as locations that could serve as mitigation areas, is an important process in environmental planning and development. A method of identifying and delineating wetlands using the technique of rapid assessment at regional scales is presented. This method combines high-resolution remote-sensed and secondary data, including thematic maps depicting vegetation, soils, and surface hydrology in a computer-aided geographical information system. The system provides a co-occurrence analysis in which the presence of existing and historic wetlands can be mapped. Areas identified as wetlands can then be compared with detailed, on-site wetland delineations conducted by professional wetland scientists to check the accuracy of the prediction. Using various combinations of data, prediction accuracy ranged between 75% to more than 80% when compared with on-site delineation. While it is conceded that automated rapid assessment will never replace an experienced professional making a site visit, the technique demonstrates a high degree of accuracy in locating and bounding wetland systems in a cost-effective manner. Further, regional screening tools with a high degree of accuracy can substantially limit more costly and time-intensive fieldwork.

Environmental Practice 16: 1–2 (2014)

This brief article sketches the current situation regarding cultural heritage, community engagement, and environmental impact assessment in Australia. The country is by no means perfect when it comes to heritage management in the impact-assessment process. Yet, practitioners have evolved a set of common understandings concerning social value and community engagement that characteristically (though, of course, not inevitably) produce mutually-acceptable outcomes for all stakeholders. These understandings rest largely on the internationally-renowned “Burra Charter,” which applies to all cultural heritage in Australia, but are given added legal weight with regard to Indigenous heritage by Native Title legislation giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a significant say in land use. The centrality of social value and community engagement is clear in the codes of ethics of professional organizations managing heritage in impact assessment, such as the Australian Archaeological Association and the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc.

Environmental Practice 18: 205–208 (2016)

Public meetings that are attended by a broadly representative cross-section of the potentially affected public are more likely than those that aren't to provide decision makers with an understanding of the range of citizen concerns regarding a potential decision. Previous research suggests that working and lower middle class women are particularly unlikely to attend environmentally related public meetings. This decreases the likelihood that decision makers will fully understand citizen concerns as a result of these meetings. This article reports on the results of a small qualitative study aimed at understanding why these women are less likely to attend. The interviewed women were socially oriented in their skills, activities, and sense of self-confidence. This, along with the way that these women conceptualized "environment," suggests that they are unlikely to see themselves as valuable participants in a public meeting on an environmental issue. Other obstacles to their participation, including a lack of time and self-con fidence, pertained more to women in one life stage than another. Environmental managers may attract more working and lower middle class women by making our suggested choices regarding meeting technique, attributes, and advertising.

We examine the spatial and socioeconomic characteristics of a sub-set of brownfields, represented by sites removed from the CERCLIS (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System), or Superfund, inventory. The study area (six Northeastern US states) has a mix of manufacturing, farming and recreational activities, and is densely populated. Environmental concerns, including urban sprawl, are growing. A spatial econometric approach is used. Contrary to expectation, brownfields are not located predominantly in minority-dominated urban core areas, at least in the study area and as far as delisted CERCLIS sites are concerned. Instead, there is a higher incidence of such sites in urban fringe and low-income areas, regardless of racial composition. An implication is that existing remediation activities must be expanded to include areas not currently targeted by policy makers. Such areas should include, for example, not just urban core areas but also those facing urbanization pressures, whether or not they have traditionally been considered urban. The results should be useful in policy formulation in the study area and in other areas where local environmental quality is closely linked to land use decisions, and contribute to more sustainable land use.

During 2010, Environmental Practice (ENP) focused issues on sustainability, the 40th anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and water. Last year was an active period for the ENP editorial office at DePaul University. These journal issues were produced by lead editor Dr. James Montgomery in conjunction with Dan Carroll as managing editor and an editorial board with several new members committed to participating in journal operations. The editorial office implemented a revised ENP format for manuscripts and a new cover that has been well received by the readers.

Benthic barriers and surface covers installed to control alligatorweed (Alternanthera philoxeroides) suppressed growth after five months in Cane Creek Lake, a water supply reservoir serving the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. By five months, no shoot biomass and few fibrous roots were detected below benthic barrier plots and only white and flaccid shoots and roots were detected below surface cover plots. Phenotypic differences were observed based on the varying duration of coverage. Surface cover and benthic barrier treatments that lasted from one to three months delayed flowering of alligatorweed by one month, while areas covered for four and five months did not flower at all. Shoot lengths were less for shaded treatments compared to control plots. Dissolved oxygen was lower and pH more acidic after one month coverage under benthic barriers. After two months, pH and dissolved oxygen recovered under benthic barriers to values near the control plots. Water chemistry in the surface cover and control plots were similar. Light penetration below benthic barriers and surface covers was blocked throughout the experiment, suggesting no deterioration of the materials occurred after five months placement in the lake. Application of light shading materials gave seasonal control of alligatorweed. Deployment and maintenance of surface covers and benthic barriers were similar and both methods are recommended for aquatic plant management of alligatorweed in Cane Creek Lake.

In the 1925 “monkey trial,” attorney and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator,” prosecuted John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating that state's Butler Act. Jennings, who was also a fundamentalist preacher, “created” a controversy that remains relevant to environmental professionals. Most, however, seem unaware of its relevance. Under the Butler Act.

Canada has seen some community approaches to watershed management similar to network governance, citizen advisory boards, and participatory action mechanisms. These collaborative approaches are highlighted in scholarship, but are limited by context as implementation is not utilized well beyond local situations. The successes of Nova Scotia wetlands are generalizable, as they provide applicable knowledge about natural resource governance with limited federal guidelines, numerous exclusionary authorities, and new regional development tactics that are beneficial for many. In practice, this case study specifically explains the role of earnest, local, and inclusive participation that is well coordinated with multiple civic agencies.

Environmental Practice 14:143–153 (2012)

When looking at brownfields, there is no single “European” way of dealing with the issue. The complexity of the problem, the differences in industrial development, and varying political and legal frameworks have hindered a uniform approach. This incoherence, however, has led to a range of methods and expertise that can be turned into a resource if brought together, evaluated, and fed into the development of an overall strategy. Such efforts have been made in recent years.

Over the past 30 years nearly every state has implemented a voluntary compliance program (VCP) to encourage development of lightly contaminated and abandoned properties also known as brownfields. Analyses of these policies consists primarily of either case studies or tabulations of site-specific characteristics such as the past, current, and future use of sites enrolled in programs. Often ignored in these analyses are the characteristics of areas surrounding these properties. This oversight is particularly problematic, because many commentators argue that VCPs encourage development in neighborhoods with strong real estate markets and predominantly White and wealthy residents while having little impact on poorer neighborhoods with primarily Black and Hispanic residents where brownfields tend to cluster. To date, however, little empirical research supports this claim. This article addresses this need by using tax-lot-level data in conjunction with data from the United States Decennial Census to examine the characteristics of the neighborhoods surrounding New York City properties enrolled in New York State's VCP: the Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP). I conclude that, for the city in general, even when controlling for the spatial distribution of brownfield sites, properties enrolled in the BCP are disproportionately located in neighborhoods with wealthier and Whiter residents and high property values. These results, however, obscure significant variability because projects cluster in a range of communities.

Environmental Practice 11:245–255 (2009)

Regardless of how one might feel about the science of climate change, the prevailing public perception is that climate change is real and that humanity's use of fossil fuels is the primary cause. At this juncture, the finer points of the debate (i.e., planetary cycles versus man-made carbon emissions) are being drowned out by the waves of media coverage about shrinking polar ice caps, breakaway ice fields, and the addition of polar bears to the endangered species list. So, for all practical purposes, climate change is now a political reality.

The Si'lailo Way: Indians, Salmon and Law on the Columbia River. Joseph C. Dupris, Kathleen S. Hill, and William H. Rodgers, Jr. 2006. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC. 450 pp. $40 paperback.

It is impossible to work in the environmental field in the Pacific Northwest without knowing something of salmon: their epic journeys from river to sea and back; the legendary runs of the nineteenth century, before the arrival of dynamite, fish wheels, dams, and hatcheries; the near-symbiotic relationship between the Northwest Indian tribes and the fish that were the backbone of their diet and culture. Those who pay any attention at all to the area's history are aware that serious injustice was done to the native people and fish of the Columbia River. The Si'lailo Way makes that injustice tangible by adding lavishly illustrated characters and a narrative that viscerally connects the reader to the people and places that fell victim to what the authors depict as a 150-year campaign to rid the Columbia of its native human and piscine inhabitants.

Federal water resources development planning and the associated environmental assessment processes have been very complex and expensive. Federal water resource agencies are reassessing approaches to planning, with the support of our leadership and legislators, which encourages National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) practitioners to apply the Council on Environmental Quality guidance to improve NEPA and to work with regulating agencies to streamline efforts and provide reasonable levels of information adequate for risk informed decision making.

Environmental Practice 18: 69–71 (2016)

In the United States (US), interstate water compacts are used to ensure the equitable division of water resources. It is necessary to understand how interstate water compacts affect intrastate water management so that administrators of water resources can effectively manage state water resources and comply with the agreed-upon allocation schemes. Although interstate compacts are more prevalent in the western US, concerns surrounding changing climate conditions, as well as water scarcity issues, have increased disputes over the management of shared water resources throughout the US. Drawing upon a case study from Colorado, the question this article seeks to answer is, how effectively does Colorado implement compliance of interstate compacts? More specifically, this report assesses implementation at the local level of government: water divisions. Using a modified version of Denise Scheberle’s implementation model, this article examines how Colorado’s Water Division 2 ensures compliance by water users party to the Arkansas River Compact. This research provides useful lessons for both academics interested in implementation studies and practitioners who are responsible for managing state resources such as water effectively, equitably, and in line with state laws and regulations. Findings suggest that compact compliance is contingent upon the effective implementation of rules curtailing water use at the local level and includes water divisions having the capacity to communicate effectively with water users and other entities involved in the maintenance of compact compliance.

Environmental Practice 16: 151–161 (2014)