Please help me with my school research its interesting!

Hello All,
Here is an interesting request:
I am currently in my last year of law school here in New York. I am taking to classes both of which have large research projects both of which I would like to write on topics concerning fishing, recreation, conservation, land use or resource issues and I am looking for any good ideas or information.
One class is on Environmental Justice and the paper topic can be a standard environmental land use, research or conservation issue.
The other class is on the Rule of State Attorney Generals. The paper here is a little trickier since it needs to be a research paper that is relevant to the work attorney generals are currently doing. Does anyone know of any current issues related to our fishing world that it work for this class?
Thanks.

One issue which comes up regularly is the public right to use and / or access streams. One interesting aspect is the concept of "navigable water" and the interpretation of what standards apply to establish a water as "Navigable". A few years in a case in the Adirondacks of NY this concept was expanded resulting in the opening of rivers for free passage even if a landowner holds both banks of the river.
AgMD

AgMD,
The Oklahoma AG has a law suit against the poultry industry in Arkansas for polluting a couple of our streams. You can read about it here: http://www.illinoisriver.org/default.aspx
Steve

a few issues bound up :
cross border waters (between states, or countries). Fogive my lack of remembering, but I believe there is an issue on a stream from British Columbia flowing down through Washington State. Something about a mill or mine and possible contaminants.

There's also a couple locally to myself. One is the Garrison diversion of the Missouri River. The other is the drainage of Devils Lake (ND). Both involve concerns of additional contaminants and invasive species.

The province of Manitoba has also started to classify agricultural areas. This has just started, however, it is based on prevention of overloading the waterways with Nitrogen and Phosphorus.

These are mostly driven from Lake Winnipeg's algae blooms continually getting worse every year. The lake is in a similar situation to that of the Great Lakes area near collapse and the pollution clean-up that continues to this day.

hope this helps. I can forward some web sites on the L. Winnipeg situation if needed.

darrell,

There are also some interesting property issues about who really owns the fish in the river? Is it the state, or is it the federal govt, or is it the landowner, or are they public goods? Perhaps more interesting is what SHOULD they be?

Mike

How about water? The bottled stuff everyone is walking around with....comes from someone's water supply. Some communities are selling their water rights to the big companies for profit of course. But whose water is it?
When you drink your bottle is it endangering someone else's trout stream? Does the community or state even have the right to sell it? What happens if the aquifer dries up? This is happening right now. Try Michigan, not the only one.

I see you're in NY. Access rights on the Lake Ontario tribs is a good topic that's about to be in all our faces once again as the landlocks, steelies, and browns start heading upstream and the landowners start looking out their kitchen windows to see whether we're on the bank or in the water.

How about Deleware River streamflow and the NYC water supply? The NJ and PA local fly fishing sites could supply you with plenty of contacts.

Public access to streams in Maine. Access was great when land was privately owned by timber companies...now it's getting iffy as the timber companies sell off the land.

I don't know a thing about the specifics how the stripers have came back, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an accident. People even fish the Hackensack River now!

The Salem Evening News north of Boston runs a ton of articles about commercial fishing regulations up there. Sad stories about guys really struggling to hang on.