Alumni Forum:
The Future of Enviro
Chicago-Kent Magazine gathered together four Chicago-Kent College of La to discuss the environmental regulation and litigation trends they have noti regulatory landscape may shift in the near future. All participants solely expressed their personal views, and did not speak in or organizations.
Cam Davis ’92
John Watson ’88
Commissioner, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago
Chair, Baker McKenzie’s Global Environmental Practice
Vice President, GEI Consultants Inc., a ChicagoBased Environmental Engineering Firm There are two things on my mind. First, threats to administrative law. One thing I’m looking closely at are changes to longstanding administrative law under Chevron v. NRDC (whose precedent provides a great deal of discretion to governmental agencies in how they interpret environmental law). I am concerned the pendulum may be swinging to much more judicial oversight of decisions that ought to be within the discretion of experts within our federal agencies. Second, there is a great deal of emphasis right now on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and moving toward renewables. The way that those changes are going to be effectuated are through the kinds of bills that we are now seeing being entertained by Congress. One trend to look at is whether we’re going to see a lot of the state attorneys general challenge those changes to federal law in a way that may hold up progress in the fight against climate change. At the municipal level, I’m not seeing a ton of changes yet, but what we see coming down the pike from a federal perspective will have ripple effects for agencies like the MWRD.
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CHICAGO-KENT MAGAZINE
Unfortunately, it seems like the last four years or so have been suggestive of these broad pendulum shifts that make regulation, enforcement, and administrative rule very chaotic. On the environmental enforcement front, for the first time in my 30-plus year career, the Trump years were notable in the changes in operations and enforcement at [Environmental Protection Agency].…The EPA, on the enforcement front, really disappeared. Interestingly, we were all sort of expecting that state and environmental groups would step up and fill the void, but that really didn’t happen either. It seemed like a lot of it may be budgetary, but a lot of the states took the opportunity as well to step back from enforcement. What we expect [now] is with the U.S. EPA, there will be a significant refocus and reemphasis on enforcement.… We’re certainly expecting the U.S. EPA to look for some early examples on the environmental justice front. [Additionally], companies are being pushed by all of their stakeholders to do more, to say more on the [environmental, social, and governance] front, and that’s creating exposure for companies and litigation. We’re seeing a lot of new cases in the state and federal consumer-protection areas focusing on claims made [by companies] on product labels…in environmental sustainability reports and marketing materials, about their performance around environmental sustainability issues.
