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Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City
William W. Buzbee
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Description for Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City
Paperback. Num Pages: 312 pages, 13, 13 black & white halftones. BIC Classification: JFSG. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 156 x 20. Weight in Grams: 457.
From 1971 to 1985, battles raged over Westway, a multibillion-dollar highway, development, and park project slated for placement in New York City. It would have projected far into the Hudson River, including massive new landfill extending several miles along Manhattan’s Lower West Side. The most expensive highway project ever proposed, Westway also provoked one of the highest stakes legal battles of its day. In Fighting Westway, William W. Buzbee reveals how environmentalists, citizens, their lawyers, and a growing opposition coalition, despite enormous resource disparities, were able to defeat this project supported by presidents, senators, governors, and mayors, much of the ... Read morebusiness community, and most unions. Although Westway’s defeat has been derided as lacking justification, Westway’s critics raised substantial and ultimately decisive objections. They questioned claimed project benefits and advocated trading federal Westway dollars for mass transit improvements. They also exposed illegally disregarded environmental risks, especially to increasingly scarce East Coast young striped bass often found in extraordinarily high numbers right where Westway was to be built.
Drawing on archival records and interviews, Buzbee goes beyond the veneer of government actions and court rulings to illuminate the stakes, political pressures, and strategic moves and countermoves that shaped the Westway war, a fight involving all levels and branches of government, scientific conflict, strategic citizen action, and hearings, trials, and appeals in federal court. This Westway history illuminates how high-stakes regulatory battles are fought, the strategies and power of America’s environmental laws, ways urban priorities are contested, the clout of savvy citizen activists and effective lawyers, and how separation of powers and federalism frameworks structure legal and political conflict. Whether readers seek an exciting tale of environmental, political, and legal conflict, to learn what really happened during these battles that transformed New York City, or to understand how modern legal frameworks shape high stakes regulatory wars, Fighting Westway will provide a good read.
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Product Details
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
About William W. Buzbee
William W. Buzbee is Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law and will be joining the law faculty at Georgetown University Law Center in the fall of 2014. He is coauthor of Environmental Protection: Law and Policy and editor of Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question. He has published in many leading law ... Read morereviews. Show Less
Reviews for Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City
Fighting Westway is a fluid historical narrative that offers rich political discernments about a legendary case study of environmental politics. Buzbee's chronological account and legal analysis of the rise and fall of the proposed redevelopment of an interstate along the Lower West Side of Manhattan island is accomplished with an inspirational, firsthand, objective, third-party storyline.... The author, an experienced environmental ... Read morescholar, is insightful on numerous fronts but is profound when discussing what he refers to as the regulatory war.... Fighting Westway draws on an incredible amount of research from the primary actors in the courtroom battles that ultimately defined Westway’s place in history. The story is a thoroughly detailed look into how regulatory policies function, are challenged, and can be altered. The importance of citizen activism in holding the relevant agencies accountable is great because the intent of environmental laws via citizen-suit provisions is a lesson that needs to be understood by public administrators and politicians.
Nicholas Guehlstorf
Law and Politics Book Review
Buzbee provides an excellent explanation of regulatory processes and the limitations of both the CAA and NEPA.... But the real heart of the book is Buzbee's able and compelling explanation of the legal strategy, evidence, and reasoning behind the Westway verdicts.... [The book] is exceptionally well suited to undergraduate courses on environmental law and politics... [and] it will give readers a clear understanding of how regulations work, how government institutions interact, and why it can be so difficult to stop a big project once it is underway.
Sarah S. Elkind
Environmental History
Buzbee tells the history of Westway in chronological fashion, detailing each twist in the regulatory road leading to the project's cancellation in 1985. The drama lies not in the outcome but in how a small group of activists managed to defeat much of the New York City and Washington, D.C., political establishment. Buzbee akes a persuasive case that the outcomes of Westway and similar environmental conflicts reflect the complex intermingling of law, politics, and regulatory procedures.
David Soll
Journal of American History
Just as a military history combines the chronology of each side's moves and blunders, the capabilities of each army's weapons, and the personalities of the generals to explain the outcome of a war, Professor Buzbee weaves the stories of the Westway camps' political tactics, shifts in the doctrines of environmental regulation and citizen access to courts, and the biographies and decisions of individual stakeholders into a comprehensive and definitive history. Part tactical postmortem, part courtroom drama, and part seamy tale of political intrigue (p. 6), Fighting Westway will be of interest to lawyers, environmentalists, and historians alike.
Harvard Law Review
The Westway was envisioned by many prominent New Yorkers in the 1970s and early 1980s as a massive highway and commercial development along the city's Hudson River shore, generously financed with federal highway funds. But that vision was never fulfilled, for it aroused 14 years of intense opposition from a host of citizen groups, as chronicled here in detail by Buzbee (law, Emory Univ.).... This is an excellent study of how broadly written regulations can engender conflicts over their application to specific projects. It speaks strongly to students of public and environmental law as well as public administration. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.
W. C. Johnson
CHOICE
Written by a law professorFighting Westway is a carefully researched and clear narrative for a broad audience. For community and environmental activists as well as professionals, it is well worth the read because it vividly illustrates the depth and complexity of the struggle that was needed in order to beat back the giant deal.
Tom Angotti
The Indypendent
Fighting Westway is a rich and illuminating analysis of an important highway project—as viewed particularly through a regulatory lens.... It will be valuable reading for those interested in the history of environmental policy, highways, neighborhood activism, and the complicated forces affecting cities' ability—or not—to manage their own development.
Francesco Russello Ammon
Planning Perspectives
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