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The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a case brought by two Idaho residents who have fought the Environmental Protection Agency for years over a wetland on their property. This isn’t just a simple case of some long-suffering landowners, though; it’s one that is backed by industry interests. And with the Court in an ultra-conservative phase, the case could totally reshape how waterways across the U.S. are protected from pollution. “There’s a range of outcomes [to the case], all of which are bad,” said Dave Owen, a professor of environmental law at the University of Califonia, Hastings. The case...

The U.S. Interstate Highway System is the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded on a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise taxes on motor fuel, today it accounts for 25% of total vehicle-miles traveled despite accounting for just 2.5% of total road network lane-miles. Yet, much of the Interstate system, construction of which began in the 1950s, is nearing the end of its functional life, along with the infrastructure of other surface transportation modes. Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars of investment will be needed to rehabilitate and in some cases rebuild this infrastructure, according to...

Infrastructure improvements are perennial fodder for politicians on the stump looking to appeal to voters. However, composing a detailed, effective investment plan that goes beyond rhetoric is a much more daunting task that requires careful consideration. President Trump has made it clear he wants to undertake a “new program of national rebuilding” by investing $1 trillion in infrastructure.1 Although the President has stated this funding would be drawn from both public and private sources, he has yet to put forth a detailed plan. Democrats in Congress have seized on the opportunity to put forward their own proposal on infrastructure. This...

<p>After a decade in dock, the historic 1920s-era Delta Queen riverboat will cruise again.</p> <p>President Donald Trump signed legislation on Tuesday authorizing the 285-foot-long riverboat immortalized in poems and songs to cruise again along the Mississippi and several other rivers.</p>

As Scott Carpenter and a few friends paddled down the Pecos river in New Mexico last May, taking advantage of spring run-off, the lead boater yelled out and made a swirling hand motion over his head in the universal signal to pull over to shore. The paddlers eddied out in time to avoid running straight through three strings of barbed wire obstructing the river. Swinging in the wind, the sign hanging from the fence read “PRIVATE PROPERTY: No Trespassing”. Sign up for This Land is Your Land, our monthly email on public lands Read more One member of their party...

President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a weeklong series of events starting Monday at the White House. The events — billed as “infrastructure week” — are part of a stepped-up effort since the president’s return a week ago from his first foreign trip to show that the White House remains focused on its agenda, despite cascading headlines about investigations into his administration’s ties to Russia. The president has invited executives from major airlines...

Problematic, in a very big way even if the offer was made.Qatar’s ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t news. They’ve effectively served as intermediaries in everything from ransom exchanges for hostages to Taliban negotiations. But actually trying to secure terrorist swaps for prisoners on their own behalf would have been a new frontier. Before he was released from a U.S. maximum-security prison last week, a confessed al Qaeda sleeper agent was offered up in a potential prisoner swap that would have freed two Americans held abroad.According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the case, the proposition was...

A federal judge in North Dakota on Thursday blocked a new Obama administration rule that would give the federal government jurisdiction over some smaller waterways just hours before it was set to go into effect. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson in Fargo issued a temporary injunction requested by North Dakota and 12 other states halting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers from regulating some small streams, tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The rule, which has prompted fierce criticism from farmers among others, was scheduled to take effect Friday. North Dakota Attorney General Wayne...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Wednesday that critics say would expand federal reach over U.S. waterways, but that the Obama administration contends will clarify which farming, development and other practices are subject to regulation. The battle over the "Waters of the U.S." rule has been brewing for months and will continue both on and off Capitol Hill. The regulation attempts to define Clean Water Act regulations as stretching to bodies of water that have a "significant nexus" with "navigable waters" to prevent pollution of drinking water. The EPA told various media outlets that the rule asserts the agency's...

But Dems say GOP needs to stop grandstanding: “We don’t want to regulate a puddle,” Boxer said. “That’s ridiculous.” House and Senate Republicans grilled Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy last week over a plan they say could give the agency control of “just about any place where water collects,” in the words of Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.).That’s just not so, says McCarthy, who claims the proposal by the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would simply clarify the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the kinds of waterways that fall under the agency’s jurisdiction. In fact, she said,...

The Adirondack Park in upstate New York, with its 3,000 lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, is nothing short of nirvana for paddlers. But often, rivers that start out on state forest land eventually flow onto private property, given that the six-million-acre park is a patchwork quilt of private and public land. A result is no-trespassing signs that force paddlers to turn around or make frustrating portages — detours on dry land with their canoes or kayaks overhead. Late last week, a state appellate court ruled in favor of a journalist who set out in 2009...

The Environmental Protection Agency's controversial water rule passed a crucial test Thursday, gaining the approval of the agency's internal review board. The EPA's Science Advisory Board noted in a peer review of the rule that there is "strong scientific support" for the agency's proposed Waters of the U.S. regulation. The panel was reviewing the EPA's draft report on the connectivity of waterways around the country. "The report should also clearly indicate that the definitions used for rivers, streams, and wetlands are scientific, rather than legal or regulatory definitions," the board wrote.

<p>A new online tool released by the Department of the Interior this week allows users to select any major stream and trace it up to its sources or down to its watershed.</p> <p>The above map, exported from the tool, highlights all the major tributaries that feed into the Mississippi River, illustrating the river’s huge catchment area of approximately 1.15 million square miles, or 37 percent of the land area of the continental U.S.</p>

A lawsuit by a New Mexico couple whose dry, sandy homestead had been classified as a wetland by federal government regulators is being dropped after Washington agreed to stop mislabeling the land.

The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday. The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs. But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but "revisit" the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs. Steve Gardner, president of Kentucky consulting...

Recently the Government Accountability Office released GAO-10-120, “National Airspace System: Regional Airport Planning Could Address Congestion If Plans Were Integrated with FAA and Airport Decision Making.” For our region and Philadelphia International Airport, the study could be summarized as follows: “There is none,” planning that is. This study was prompted because the Federal Aviation Administration predicts that our national airspace systems are on track to become congested beyond their capacity. The GAO was asked to evaluate regional airport planning in congested metropolitan areas like Philadelphia. In 2009 Philadelphia International Airport registered 492,000 takeoffs and landings; this number is expected to...

BAGHDAD — Iraqi River Police (IRP) conducted operations here on the Tigris River to hone their skills in keeping Iraq’s waterways safe from terrorists, Sept. 1. The mission of the IRP is to provide search and rescue, safety patrol, and counter smuggling operations along the waterways of Iraq. Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq advisors, mentors and trainers help the IRP accomplish this mission. There are two advisors at the River Patrol. One is responsible for teaching waterborne operations, how to pilot the boats, and how to use the boats to conduct the operations found in the mission statement. The second advisor...

Not long ago I wrote a piece on how the law often becomes a slippery slope when in the hands of judicial activists and radicals that look to the law in order to warp it to their agenda. Today I have a different example of that warping of law except this is one from the legislative side in Congress. This time Congress is attempting to take under its control all water in the United States, even that which sits on or under privately owned lands. Senator Russ Feingold (D, Wis.) has introduced S. 787, legislation that is meant to help...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ali Al-Marri Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, a dual national of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri entered his guilty plea at a hearing this afternoon before Judge Michael M. Mihm in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. In so doing, al-Marri admitted that he agreed with others to provide material support or resources to al-Qaeda in the form of personnel, including himself, to work under al-Qaeda’s...

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals. In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal , hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems. Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review,...