House Bills 3620 and 3621, by Representative Isaac, Erode Water Quality and Open Space Protections in the Hill Country

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation

Compares 2011 median weekly earnings by gender, occupation, and race/ethnicity; the wage gender gaps within races/ethnicities; and the prevalence of occupational segregation in which women tend to work in certain occupations and men in others

Protecting Species or Endangering Development? How Consultation Under the Endangered Species Act Affects Energy Projects on Public Lands

Executive Summary Throughout its forty-three-year history, the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) has been one of the most celebrated environmental laws but also one of the most reviled. After passing with strong bi-partisan support in 1973, the ESA has recently faced growing opposition, amid concerns that it has failed to adequately protect species, while unreasonably impeding economic development. Much of the criticism has been directed towards section 7 of the ESA, which requires federal agencies to ensure that actions they undertake or authorize do not jeopardize threatened or endangered species, by consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”). Industry groups have argued that the consultation requirement frequently stops or delays much needed energy, transportation, water supply, and other projects. This study seeks to assess the impact of consultation, under section 7 of the ESA, on energy development on public land. To this end, the study analyzes 179 consultations undertaken between FY2010 and FY2014 with respect to oil, gas, solar, and wind energy projects on public land managed by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”). Basic information about each consultation, including a brief description of the project involved and a list of species affected, was obtained from FWS’s Tracking and Integrated Logging System. We also reviewed the biological opinions and concurrence letters issued by FWS and, for a subset of consultations, interviewed agency staff and industry representatives involved. Key findings from the analysis include: A relatively small number of energy projects authorized on federal lands between FY2010 and FY2014 went through the consultation process. The majority (eighty percent) of consultations that were carried out involved oil and gas drilling projects. Fifteen percent of consultations related to solar energy projects and five percent to wind energy projects. Only a small proportion (ten percent) of all oil and gas drilling projects approved by BLM from FY2010 to FY2014 were subject to consultation. In contrast, eighty-two percent of BLM approved solar energy projects and seventy-one percent of BLM approved wind energy projects underwent consultation. Most of the energy project consultations undertaken between FY2010 and FY2014 were completed within the 135 day time limit set in the ESA. There was, however, often significant back-and-forth between FWS, BLM, and the project proponent prior to the official start of consultation. This is a concern for industry, as pre-consultation discussions can add significant time to the review process and thereby lead to project delays. The need to consult can also give rise to significant uncertainty for industry. The assessment of project effects and the measures required to mitigate those effects often differs markedly between, and even within, FWS offices. Similar projects may, therefore, be assessed differently depending on the FWS staff handling the consultation. FWS has recently taken steps to address industry concerns regarding the potential for project delays and inconsistencies in the review process. To this end, FWS has issued a number of programmatic biological opinions, which cover multiple similar actions. Where a project is covered by a programmatic biological opinion, consultation tends to proceed more quickly, and there is less need for pre-consultation discussions. The existence of a programmatic biological opinion can also greatly reduce the complexity of consultation and generally leads to increased certainty for project developers.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Protecting Species or Hindering Energy Development? How the Endangered Species Act Impacts Energy Projects on Western Public Lands

Since it was enacted in 1973, the ESA has been one of the most celebrated environmental laws, but also one of the most reviled. Industry groups argue that the consultation process frequently delays and sometimes halts much needed energy, transportation, water supply, and other projects and often dramatically increases project costs. Environmentalists disagree with this view, contending that the process actually rarely stops anything and that the FWS lacks the backbone to impose meaningful conservation requirements that would be costly or inconvenient for the project developer. In 2015, the authors decided to delve deeply into ESA §7 to analyze how it actually works in practice and to assess the validity of various parties’ claims about the consultation process. They focused on the impact of §7 consultation on energy development on public land. This Comment is an overview of that study and key findings. In a nutshell, the authors learned that only a small fraction of energy projects developed on public land are reviewed at all under §7. When it applies, the consultation process appears to go quickly and smoothly for the vast majority of oil and gas projects, for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, consultation on solar energy and wind energy projects tends to be lengthy and complicated.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Now We\u27ve Got Our Khaki On: Woman And Music In First World War London

Scholarship on British perspectives on the First World War now consistently incorporates reflections on wartime labor on the Home Front, particularly on women’s roles as nurses, factory workers, philanthropists, and care-givers. However, the creative work that produced the War’s popular culture—the material and affective labor of artists and audience members—is still largely absent: artistic responses to the conflict are studied chiefly through masterpieces of elite culture that conveyed appropriately elegiac affects of mourning and that continue to perpetuate modern conceptions of the War as a monolith of male martyrdom and heroism. This dissertation bridges this gap, situating women’s music-making within contemporary national debates over the political, economic, and social ramifications of women’s wartime work. During the First World War, the affective labor of musical performance and consumption became entwined with medical care, education, social control, and anxieties over wartime gender and class roles. Performers used their musical labor not only to earn a living and provide entertainment but also to extend the possibilities for women’s involvement in wartime politics, sometimes in support of state-driven agendas, sometimes in service of alternative political and social standpoints. Using archival sources, I explore these constellations of music, wartime, and gender through four case studies: the male impersonator Vesta Tilley and her performances in character as a soldier; female musicians in music-hall orchestras, and their relationship with the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union; the United Suffragists’ Women’s Club and its musical activities of concerts, folk dancing, and gramophone records; and Lena Ashwell’s Concerts at the Front, whose performers toured across France, Malta, and Egypt. These case studies broaden the scope of scholarship on women’s experiences of the First World War, demonstrating both how popular culture was shaped by the conflict, and how performers and audiences used music-making to shape and expand their wartime roles

Rule of Capture Undermines Groundwater Regulation in Texas

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Implementing SB 3: Adopting Environmental Flows in Texas

Senate Bill 3 emerged from the Texas Legislature in 2007 as an attempt to create certainty over how the state deals with allocating water to environmental flows. Senate Bill 3 created a process in the Water Code requiring regional stakeholder groups (referred to as Basin and Bay Area Stakeholder Committees or BBASCs) to develop consensus-based environmental flow standards and strategies to meet the environmental flow standards specific to the rivers and bay systems in a particular region. The concept of “environmental flows” describes the flows of water necessary to protect the ecological health of rivers and of the bays and estuaries that are the ultimate recipients of these flows. The consensus of the scientific community is that for environmental flow standards to be adequate to support a sound ecological environment in a stream system, they must include minimum subsistence flows, varying levels of base flows, high flow pulses, and overbank pulses that vary throughout the year. Environmental flow standards establish requirements that govern when a water right holder may remove water from a stream or a river (instream flow requirements), thus protecting that water for instream and bay or estuary environmental needs. The Water Code directs the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), after considering the stakeholder committees’ recommendations, to adopt environmental flow standards “adequate to support a sound ecological environment, to the maximum extent reasonable considering other public interests and other relevant factors.” This paper summarizes the environmental flow standard and strategy recommendations made by the six stakeholder committees that submitted reports to the TCEQ and compares these to the standards the TCEQ ultimately adopted. The adopted standards only apply to permits seeking a new appropriation of water or to an amendment to an existing water right that increases the amount of water authorized to be stored, taken, or diverted.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Texas Water Planning and the Endangered Species Act

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Foreword

The staff of the Washington International Law Journal presents the third installment of Volume 27. Until recently, the Washington International Law Journal was the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal and was limited to the Pacific Rim and related law and policy. The Journal\u27s scope expanded in Volume 24 to include all international, foreign, and comparative law topics. This issue seeks to further implement this expansion with articles and comments addressing a wide range of international and foreign law topics. In Volume 27, Issue 3, readers can explore the role of carbon-related border tax adjustments and state efforts to combat climate recalcitrance with an article by David A. C. Bullock. Further, Marco Bocchese provides readers with a discussion of the impact of international prosecutions on the continuation of wars around the world. Finally, Shamshad Pasarlay offers insight into the limits of constitutional deferral by analyzing the history of Afghanistan\u27s 2004 Constitution