From 1971 to 1985, battles raged over Westway, a multibillion-dollar highway, development, and park project slated for placement in New York City. It would have projected far into the Hudson River, including massive new landfill extending several miles along Manhattan’s Lower West Side. The most expensive highway project ever proposed, Westway also provoked one of the highest stakes legal battles of its day. In Fighting Westway, William W. Buzbee reveals how environmentalists, citizens, their lawyers, and a growing opposition coalition, despite enormous resource disparities, were able to defeat this project supported by presidents, senators, governors, and mayors, much of the business community, and most unions. Although Westway’s defeat has been derided as lacking justification, Westway’s critics raised substantial and ultimately decisive objections. They questioned claimed project benefits and advocated trading federal Westway dollars for mass transit improvements. They also exposed illegally disregarded environmental risks, especially to increasingly scarce East Coast young striped bass often found in extraordinarily high numbers right where Westway was to be built. Drawing on archival records and interviews, Buzbee goes beyond the veneer of government actions and court rulings to illuminate the stakes, political pressures, and strategic moves and countermoves that shaped the Westway war, a fight involving all levels and branches of government, scientific conflict, strategic citizen action, and hearings, trials, and appeals in federal court. This Westway history illuminates how high-stakes regulatory battles are fought, the strategies and power of America’s environmental laws, ways urban priorities are contested, the clout of savvy citizen activists and effective lawyers, and how separation of powers and federalism frameworks structure legal and political conflict. Whether readers seek an exciting tale of environmental, political, and legal conflict, to learn what really happened during these battles that transformed New York City, or to understand how modern legal frameworks shape high stakes regulatory wars, Fighting Westway will provide a good read.
Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Environmental Protection: Law and Policy, respected for its intellectual breadth and depth, is an interdisciplinary overview of Environmental Law, incorporating history, theory, litigation, regulation, policy, science, economics, and ethics. It covers the history of environmental protection; policy objectives; regulatory design strategies; and constitutional federalism?and related statutory interpretation issues concerning the design and implementation of the environmental laws. Coverage also includes the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, CERCLA, and other pollution control statutes; a chapter on climate change?that discusses scientific, policy, program design, and statutory authority questions; and natural resource management issues (including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and limited coverage of national forest management). New to the 9th Edition: New co-author Alejandro Camacho, a leading scholar on natural resources and public land law Ch.1: New materials on the Flint, Michigan battles over lead contamination of the municipal water system Ch.2: Discussion of regulatory and judicial skirmishes resulting from policy differences among the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations Ch.3: Changes, driven by the Supreme Court, to areas such as standard of judicial review (including the Courts endorsement of the major questions doctrine) and potential changes to entrenched law in areas such as the nondelegation doctrine Ch.4: Council on Environmental Qualitys overhaul of its 1978 NEPA regulations under the Trump administration and the Biden CEQs phased revision of those regulations; Food and Water Watch v. FERC; Sierra Club v. EPA Ch.5: Discussion of recent research and scholarship on biodiversity loss, the Trump administrations efforts to restrict the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and the Biden administrations attempts to reverse or revise these changes; recent developments on listing, critical habitat, federal agency consultation, taking prohibitions, and incidental takings Ch.6: Updated references to air pollution science Ch.7: Updates on ongoing litigation involving the waters of the United States definition in the Clean Water Act Ch.8: EPAs efforts to implement 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act; League of United Latin American Citizens v. Regan Ch.9: New case law under CERCLA; discussion of the treatment in the Restatement (Third) Torts of joint and several liability Ch.10: Streamlined coverage of environmental enforcement process Ch.11: Updated coverage of climate change law, policy, and science to reflect opposed regulatory responses to climate change by the Trump and Biden administrations; West Virginia v. EPA Online environmental justice supplement Streamlined note material Benefits for instructors and students: Thorough, nuanced treatment of existing laws, regulations, and cases, regulatory design strategies, and current and developing policy objectives Interdisciplinary approach incorporating science, economics, and ethics Coverage of major federal pollution control, environmental assessment, and species protection laws Charts and graphics Exercises and problems Distinguished author team with extensive practical, scholarly, and teaching experience
From 1971 to 1985, battles raged over Westway, a multibillion-dollar highway, development, and park project slated for placement in New York City. It would have projected far into the Hudson River, including massive new landfill extending several miles along Manhattan’s Lower West Side. The most expensive highway project ever proposed, Westway also provoked one of the highest stakes legal battles of its day. In Fighting Westway, William W. Buzbee reveals how environmentalists, citizens, their lawyers, and a growing opposition coalition, despite enormous resource disparities, were able to defeat this project supported by presidents, senators, governors, and mayors, much of the business community, and most unions. Although Westway’s defeat has been derided as lacking justification, Westway’s critics raised substantial and ultimately decisive objections. They questioned claimed project benefits and advocated trading federal Westway dollars for mass transit improvements. They also exposed illegally disregarded environmental risks, especially to increasingly scarce East Coast young striped bass often found in extraordinarily high numbers right where Westway was to be built. Drawing on archival records and interviews, Buzbee goes beyond the veneer of government actions and court rulings to illuminate the stakes, political pressures, and strategic moves and countermoves that shaped the Westway war, a fight involving all levels and branches of government, scientific conflict, strategic citizen action, and hearings, trials, and appeals in federal court. This Westway history illuminates how high-stakes regulatory battles are fought, the strategies and power of America’s environmental laws, ways urban priorities are contested, the clout of savvy citizen activists and effective lawyers, and how separation of powers and federalism frameworks structure legal and political conflict. Whether readers seek an exciting tale of environmental, political, and legal conflict, to learn what really happened during these battles that transformed New York City, or to understand how modern legal frameworks shape high stakes regulatory wars, Fighting Westway will provide a good read.
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