http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/uclalaw_emmett_pritzker/rss Recent eScholarship items from Pritzker Briefs Fri, 15 May 2026 16:06:12 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xq589k9 Inefficient regulatory policies and poor construction management have caused the overall expenses and the duration of major public transit projects in California to climb at an alarming rate. This paper, the sixth in the Emmett Institute's Pritzker Brief series, examines some of the causes of planning and construction delays, identifies flaws in current construction policy and offers steps to be taken in order to prioritize public health and safety. To ensure that public funds are put to appropriate use and negligent planning is avoided, the report provides a set of recommendations to promote proper development and implementation of public transit in heavily populated metropolitan areas. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xq589k9 Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Elkind, Ethan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9g1505jf California’s water supply system depends heavily on groundwater use, but its overuse threatens the reliability of the state’s future water availability. In our inaugural Pritzker Brief, Rhead Enion describes the importance of groundwater and the advantages of realigning California's water rights system to better manage groundwater. According to Under Water, the state should establish enforceable standards and goals for monitoring, data reporting and management of groundwater basins, to be implemented by regional and local entities. Under Water recommends, among other things: comprehensive groundwater monitoring, including groundwater use metering and groundwater quality screenings; the availability at a statewide level of monitoring data from regional and local agencies; and the implementation of statewide rules for regional regulation of groundwater, with mandatory management goals. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9g1505jf Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Enion, M. Rhead https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gk3w35h <p>California has set laudable goals for ensuring that all residents have access to clean, affordable drinking water. Though the state has taken steps toward achieving these goals, they remain largely aspirational for many communities, particularly those that depend on small water systems in Los Angeles County and throughout California.</p><p>This paper addresses challenges faced by small water systems in L.A. County in providing safe and affordable drinking water to customers. These include limited financial and personnel resources as well as reduced access to alternative water sources. Small water systems are particularly vulnerable to groundwater contamination and often struggle with regulatory compliance. As a result, they have a higher percentage of water quality problems and higher rates of noncompliance than larger systems.</p><p>Small water systems’ lack of economies of scale often means that consumers pay more for water from small systems than from larger systems. Despite... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gk3w35h Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Logar, Nathaniel Salzman, James Horowitz, Cara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7966p0zr <p>The California Coastal Commission is a state agency whose mission is to preserve and manage the state's coast. Its decisions regarding planning and development implement core state policies and determine individual legal rights. Both the perception and the reality of a fair, just, and accessible process is crucial to maintaining public confidence in the Commission's decision-making.</p><p>This Pritzker Brief analyzes the processes and procedures that the Commission utilizes in making certain types of important decisions, called "quasi-judicial decisions." The Commission makes these types of decisions often, for example in reviewing coastal development permit applications, certifying local coastal programs, and reviewing the activities of the federal government to assess whether those activities are consistent with California law. The article identifies opportunities and recommends strategies to improve the transparency and fairness of the Commission's processes and procedures.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7966p0zr Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Faust, Ralph https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6j74k1j3 An estimated 20 million tons of plastic litter enters the ocean each year. This litter has a wide range of adverse environmental and economic impacts, from wildlife deaths and degraded coral reefs to billions of dollars in cleanup costs, damage to sea vessels, and lost tourism and fisheries revenues. Despite increased attention to the problem and general agreement about the need for reduction and cleanup of marine plastic litter, there is presently no overarching action plan that would effectively address the problem.This paper, fifth in the Emmett Center's Pritzker Brief series, reviews the universe of studies, policies and international agreements relevant to the problem and provides a suite of recommendations to achieve meaningful reductions in plastic marine litter by the year 2025. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6j74k1j3 Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gold, Mark Mika, Katie Horowitz, Cara Herzog, Megan Leitner, Lara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6b71w42h California gets about 30 percent of its total water supply from groundwater.  Overdraft threatens California’s continued access to this scarce resource, and the state does not presently have an effective way of allocating and managing groundwater.  In this paper, the fourth in the Emmett Center's Pritzker Brief Series, Rhead Enion evaluates the adjudicatory process used to resolve groundwater use disputes in California, and recommends a number of reforms that could be implemented by the legislature or courts to address problems in the adjudication and post-adjudication management of groundwater resources. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6b71w42h Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Enion, M. Rhead https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x83x4w6 <p>In recent years, municipalities throughout California have struggled to meet housing needs, and construction of new housing units in the state has not kept apace of demand, resulting in increased housing costs that rank among the highest in the nation. At the same time, California faces pressure to achieve ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals in the relatively near term. Meeting those goals will require significant decreases in transportation sector emissions, which represent about 40 percent of the state’s GHG emissions. Particularly impacted by both the affordability and climate change crises are low-income Californians, whose communities suffer disproportionate impacts from lack of housing availability and vulnerability to climate change—and who also are California’s most reliable transit riders.</p><p>Lawmakers seeking to tackle both housing and greenhouse gas reduction goals have turned to transit-oriented development programs—zoning programs that promote increased... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x83x4w6 Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Stein, Julia E. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55q0110h <p>California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is an ambitious, innovative, and controversial policy that controls greenhouse-gas emissions associated with transport fuels – a large emissions source mostly neglected by prior climate policies, with unique technical challenges of uncertainty, long time-horizons, and network effects, that hinder its response to economy-wide emissions-pricing policies. The LCFS was introduced in 2011 as one measure to pursue the goal of California's landmark 2006 climate law, returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. LCFS regulations were revised in 2015 and further changes are now proposed for 2019, under a new statutory target for state emissions 40 percent below 1990 by 2030.</p><p>Now in effect for seven years, the LCFS is a major element of California's climate policy. It has survived early legal challenges suffering only some implementation delays, and has generated large expansions of alternative fuel supply and significant reductions in... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55q0110h Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Parson, Edward A. Forgie, Julia Lueders, Jesse Hecht, Sean B. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mz962b1 This policy brief offers recommendations regarding implementation of A.B. 2516, which directs the California Natural Resources Agency and Ocean Protection Council to develop an online database of actions taken across the state to plan for sea level rise. The authors and contributors to these recommendations collectively bring expertise in coastal law, climate change adaptation, program evaluation, and survey research.These recommendations may be useful to other states, policymakers, researchers, and private entities seeking to enhance the compilation, publication, and analysis of information about climate change adaptation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mz962b1 Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Herzog, Megan M. Moser, Susanne C. Newkirk, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34m0j8j6 <p>In 2013, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced one of the most ambitious environmental programs in the country, the Carbon Neutrality Initiative. The CNI sets a goal to reach net zero carbon emissions from the system’s 10 campuses by 2025.</p><p>Though we often think of the need for scientific and technological breakthroughs to achieve carbon neutrality, UC is finding that at least as important are insights into organizational behavior, communications strategy, and operations management.Our focus in this Pritzker brief is on lessons the UC system is learning as it implements its carbon neutrality goal. We believe that these lessons will be invaluable for other organizations as they work to reduce or eliminate their emissions.</p><p>Organizations seeking to become carbon neutral need to evaluate and overcome financial and management challenges, not just technical barriers. They will need to understand their organizations intimately, and institute multiple... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34m0j8j6 Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Carlson, Ann Forgie, Julia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fm260mp <p>Approximately 27 trillion pounds of chemicals are produced or imported into the United States every year, more than one trillion of them in California alone. In the face of relative inaction at the federal level, state governments have moved to address hazardous chemical use. Our third Pritzker Brief evaluates California's green chemistry legislation (AB 1879).California’s green chemistry program would shift the focus in chemical regulation to alternatives analysis. This means the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) would be tasked with identifying and prioritizing products containing chemicals of concern. Then product and chemical manufacturers would be required to determine the relative safety and viability of potential substitutes for those priority chemicals of concern. DTSC reviews these alternatives analyses and develops regulatory responses to limit use of the priority chemical accordingly. Unlike TSCA, California’s program would shift much of the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fm260mp Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Malloy, Timothy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qp8j8ng Los Angeles is one of the best places in the country for a relatively easy and cost-effective measure to improve public health, combat climate change, reduce energy demand, and save money: installing cool roofs. This Pritzker Brief makes a case for accelerating the adoption of cool roofs in L.A. and recommends law and policy strategies for achieving that goal. Using a dataset of L.A. rooftops and some conservative estimates of energy savings, Cara Horowitz shows that L.A. residents could save $30 million a year if the city significantly improved its adoption of cool roofs on new and existing buildings. Other benefits would include improved air quality, lower urban temperatures, and a reduction in global warming equivalent to removing millions of cars from the road for a year. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qp8j8ng Thu, 6 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Horowitz, Cara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/073799fz <p>In California, surface water storage has become a hot topic. California's recent drought has fueled the discussion, with a number of agricultural interests forcefully arguing that the state needs to store more water. Their efforts have been successful, and California's water bond, Proposition 1, has earmarked $2.7 billion for the public benefits of storage projects.</p><p>There are now dozens of proposals for Proposition 1 funding, including twenty projects that incorporate surface storage, varying in size and location from large CALFED projects supported by federal and state funding to smaller, local projects. On average, the eligible large CALFED projects seek ten times the amount of funding as the small local/regional projects.</p><p>While there has been a great deal of research and debate over the environmental impacts and cost effectiveness of surface water storage projects, there has been little consideration of the more fundamental question of their practical feasibility—in... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/073799fz Wed, 17 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Forgie, Julia Salzman, James