Environmental/Natural Resources Law

• 03/19/12 Top Environmental Concerns in Fracking As a result of recent technological innovations improving the ability to extract oil and natural gas from shale and other rock formations, the popularity of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has surged, leading to new investment opportunities and positive growth for the domestic gas and oil production industry. With the expansion, however, has come risk and scrutiny.
• 06/01/11 Too Green to be true? How to avoid green-building litigation when marketing and promoting ''eco-friendly'' and ''sustainable'' real estate.
• 04/15/10 Fueling the Future How Federal Funding is Creating Business Opportunities in an Emerging Biofuels and Alternative Energy Market.
• 07/02/09 The Broad Reach of Chemical Security Regulations Following September 11, 2001, the American people became painfully aware of the devastation that can result from the misuse of America's resources. One such resource -- the wide array of potentially harmful chemicals used in American industry -- drew the immediate attention of Congress because of the high potential for damage.
• 08/01/08 Compliance: The Original Sustainability Throughout this country's relatively short history of regulating the environment, most of the major programs have focused on a model of forced compliance to achieve the desired goal: a cleaner environment. Over the years, as our natural resources have continued their inevitable slide toward exhaustion, federally and locally mandated compliance programs have begun the logical shift toward the notion of sustainability.
• 08/01/08 Wind Energy In parts of the central United States, far from the population centers of the Eastern and Western seaboards, certain "winds of change" have been blowing for a quarter-century. What was little more than a whisper in the early 1980s has become a brisk breeze. Wind energy became the nation's fastest-growing energy source in the 1990s, driven by technological improvements, favorable economics and public demand, particularly on the West Coast. The remarkable growth of wind energy production continues at an accelerated pace today.
• 08/01/08 Corporate Sustainability and the Marketplace The market has changed, turning the traditional business model on its head. Whether due to increasing knowledge of the economic costs of environmental degradation, rising oil and food costs, or simple greenwashing, businesses around the world are reacting to customers and shareholders who are becoming more informed and more vocal in insisting upon corporate sustainability.
• 04/01/08 Anatomy of a Recall The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) works to protect consumers from harm caused by consumer products. These consumer products may pose fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazards or cause injury to children. The CPSC determines whether a product poses a hazard to consumer safety and provides a mechanism for the voluntary recall of unsafe products.
• 04/01/08 A Plan to Have A Plan: Does the State Water Plan Hold Water? Georgia lost its upper hand in the tri-state water wars in February when a federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., placed the state on an equal playing field with Florida and Alabama. The court invalidated a 2003 agreement between Georgia and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which provided that 25 percent of the water in Lake Lanier would be managed as water supply for the metro Atlanta area, ruling that such a realignment of the purposes of Lake Lanier literally requires an Act of Congress.
• 10/01/02 Meet Georgia’s “Mold Man” How does an attorney, husband and father of four children come to have the illustrious title of "Georgia's Mold Man" added to his credentials? And how is mold making headlines in today's courtrooms with new terms like Stachybotrys atra? If you're Steve O'Day, it's just another day in the office.
• 07/25/12 The Sophisticated User Defense: It’s Not Just for Drug Companies Anymore The sophisticated user defense, also known as the learned intermediary doctrine, has been widely used by drug manufacturers in defending against failure to warn claims in products liability lawsuits.
• 08/01/12 The Anatomy of a Groundwater Contamination Case When an in-house lawyer receives a call from one of the company's facilities reporting that someone has found contamination in the groundwater beneath the facility, you know that, at a minimum, it is bad news.
• 02/07/13 Municipal Water Supply and “Smart Water Grid^SM Services”