Eco-Logic

• the restoration of bison to tribal lands -
• a scat - sniffing dog helping to gather data to protect orcas
• a lawsuit against a banana company -
• restoration of Sea Otters and their effect on an ecosystem. -
• wildfires in Canada sending smoke hundreds of miles -
• Supreme Court’s horrible 5 - to

SUPREME COURT vs. CLEAN WATER ACT

We try to start every show with good news.

We have good news about

• the restoration of bison to tribal lands,
• a scat-sniffing dog helping to gather data to protect orcas,
• a lawsuit against a banana company, and
• restoration of Sea Otters and their effect on an ecosystem.

On the not-good-news front, we are disturbed to be proven right about climate crisis coming directly into our lives. People in the Western U.S.A. and Canada have been experiencing this each summer for years. The wildfires in Canada are sending smoke hundreds of miles, to where NYC was deemed the WORST air quality in the whole planet this week. Many news outlets are saying “see we told you climate crisis is real”. It's Eco-Logic that has been telling you this the longest.

The Supreme Court made a horrible 5-to-4 decision against the environment.

The conservative justices went out of their way to rewrite the Clean Water Act and gut wetlands protections. Even Justice Brett Kavanaugh found this ruling extreme, pointing out that the majority has replaced adjacent waters with adjoining waters — directly contradicting the plain text of the Clean Water Act. We would never have expected to be quoting Justice Kavanaugh in support of the environment, but his strict adherence to the text of the law makes clear the problem with the court’s decision.

Kavanaugh wrote:

Put simply, the Court’s atextual test—rewriting adjacent to mean adjoining—will produce real-world consequences for the waters of the United States and will generate regulatory uncertainty. I would stick to the text. There can be no debate, in my respectful view, that the key statutory term is adjacent and that adjacent wetlands is a broader category than adjoining wetlands. To be faithful to the statutory text, we cannot interpret adjacent wetlands to be the same thing as adjoining wetlands.

We're joined by two wonderful experts from the Clearwater Board of Directors, a long-time environmental lawyer and a long-time environmental activist, who have both been analyzing this issue. Gareth Hougham is president of Hudson Valley Arts and Science and adjunct professor of environmental science at SUNY Purchase and a member of the Town of Ossining Planning Board. Dan Riesel is a founder of the first Environmental Protection Unit in the Department of Justice, having had an environmental law practice since 1970. He has taught environmental law and litigation at Cardozo and Columbia Law Schools for over a decade, and chairs the American Law Institute annual courses on environmental law and environmental litigation.

We also have environmental songs by Celtic Thunder—A Place in the Choir— and Sparks—Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth.

We welcome your call-ins – we love to hear from our listeners!

Eco-Logic.wbai.org is where you can go to get our DVDs and CDs. Get great information and entertainment and support our show – it's a win-win!

• Gareth Hougham - president of Hudson Valley Arts and Science & Hudson Valley Stream Conservancy adjunct professor of environmental science at SUNY Purchase; member of the Town of Ossining Planning Board
• Dan Riesel - cofounder of the first Environmental Protection Unit in the Department of Justice
• Both are members of the Clearwater board of directors. -

•  A Place in the Choir - Celtic Thunder
• Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth - Sparks

• http://ecoradio.org

• https://streamconservancy.org/about

• https://www.justice.gov/enrd

• https://www.clearwater.org/