Yesterday, 3/21/2012, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Sackett v. EPA, No. 10-1062, concluding that “[...] the compliance order in this case is final agency action for which there is no adequate remedy other than APA review, and that the Clean Water Act does not preclude that review. We therefore reverse the judgment [...]
Archive for the ‘Construction’ Category
9 Jan
The Sackett Racket: Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA
UPDATE: Supreme Court Renders Decision in Sackett v. EPA Our previous coverage of Sackett v. United States Environmental Protection Agency generated the most traffic of almost any other post on our blog. The people – including Chantell and Michael Sackett – want to know: “If EPA essentially seizes control of your property by labeling it as [...]
8 Dec
Two Updates in Building Betterment
Earlier in the summer, The Green Mien covered the President’s Better Buildings Initiative (BBI), highlighting a recently published independent study that lauded the Initiative as a major American jobs creator. Driving the Initiative is a vision of a “clean energy economy” supported in large part by an energy efficient infrastructure. The President intends to hit [...]
23 Aug
“Green Value” and Mortgage Collateral
In a recent article, law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf addresses head-on how the only-recently-ubiquitous “green” metrics, terminology, and technology in real estate and development have affected building valuation, and, specifically, how one can hedge the risks when green value is lost. The Dewey & LeBoeuf piece discusses two general ways that “green” that can add [...]
15 Jun
Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative Finds Encouraging Statistics
On January 25th, as a part of his State of the Union Address, President Obama championed the renewable energy movement as “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” and vowed landmark environmental changes like doubling the share of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 and making commercial buildings (schools, offices, stores, hospitals, government buildings, etc.) 20 percent [...]
31 May
A Sliver of an Exemption Left in Silviculture Rule
40 CFR 122.27 (the EPA’s “silviculture rule”) exempts from NPDES permitting all discharges from silvicultural (forestry) activities such as thinning, prescribed burning, pest and fire control, harvesting operations, surface drainage, or road construction and maintenance resulting from natural runoff. But recent opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have restricted the [...]
9 Feb
Is Your Building Living Life to The Fullest?
Move over LEED, there’s a new green building standard in town. Most of us are at least peripherally familiar with Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED), a now-ubiquitous green building certification system that, in their own words, provides “third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies intended to improve [...]
11 Nov
Building Code Officials Adopt Changes to Achieve Energy Savings of 30%
US building code officials recently assembled in Charlotte, NC, to take final action on proposed modifications to the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The IECC – developed by the International Code Council (ICC), a membership association dedicated to building safety and fire prevention – governs the construction of residential and commercial buildings in the US. [...]
