Environmental Law Alert Blog

Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:

  • proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
  • stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
  • emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.

If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.

2020 Canadian Law Blog Awards Winner

The summer is quickly coming to a close, and the West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) summer law student volunteers want to take this opportunity to thank our friends and mentors at WCEL for their support and guidance during the course of this amazing experience.

Beneath the earth lies groundwater, buried treasure in the form of aquifers. Manage it well, and the treasure will continue to nourish us for generations to come.

In May I spent time with colleagues from the Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research in Treaty 8 territory in northeastern BC listening to Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents talk about the cumulative effects of development projects on the health of their land and communities.  Over the past few decades the region has experienced a

This week West Coast Environmental Law held a meeting “Go With the Flow: Meeting on Regulations for the BC Water Sustainability Act” with allies in the conservation world to discuss our Expectations for the next critical phase of the BC Water Sustainability Act – the development of the regulations that will make the Act effecti

When the BC government unveiled its new water pricing scheme, we wrote that while a major increase, the amounts being charged seemed very low.

On June 18, the West Coast Environmental Law Association hosted a telephone town hall on what the rolling back of Canada's environmental laws means for oil tankers and the health and security of BC's coast.

This is a guest post by Allison Russell, a lawyer at Rana Law, and Emily Beveridge, an articling student at Rana Law, who are part of the legal team representing a group of Treaty 8 First Nations in their legal challenges against the controversial Site C Dam.

Overview

A law student’s perspective of TWN’s announcement that it has denied approval of Kinder Morgan to proceed through in its territory.

On May 26, 2015 British Columbia’s Auditor General Carol Bellringer released her report on “Managing the Cumulative Effects of Natural Resource Development in BC.”  The report found that the Ministry of Forests, Lands and

Meaningful public participation is a backbone of environmental assessment. Without it, project reviews can become a closed-door rubber stamp, vulnerable to manipulation by proponents, governments, or any stakeholder with an agenda and a seat at the table.