Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on March 29, 2023 new proposed wastewater discharge standards to reduce discharges of toxic metals and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants. Steam electric power plants use heat to create steam that produces electricity. These plants use large amounts of water – approximately 133 billion gallons a day. This water …
California has been pushing hard recently to lose its status as the second-largest contributor of the nation’s greenhouse gases (still comfortably behind Texas.) In 2020, the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”) enacted the Advanced Clean Trucks (“ACT”) rule, the world’s first zero-emissions commercial truck requirement. Specifically, ACT required large-capacity vehicle (truck) manufacturers to phase out …
It has been a rough year for cryptocurrency mining. Just a year ago, the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing addressing the environmental effects of cryptocurrency mining, with a particular focus on the process’s use of energy and resulting high rates of emissions (covered by ELM here), but with a noticeable bent of optimism …
As reported in August 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) is the United States’ largest (and most complex) commitment to investing in climate change to date. The 725-page law provides a number of clean-energy tax credits to qualifying companies and commits $370 billion in funds aimed at lowering energy costs and building up supply chains …
Just two days after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish legally enforceable drinking-water levels for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), reported by ELM here, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation released final ambient water quality guidance values for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-Dioxane in New York …
Earlier this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled, PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation Rulemaking. In keeping to its commitments in the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, the EPA took a significant step by proposing to establish legally enforceable drinking-water levels for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) known to …
New York may be on board to be the fifth state in the nation to hold producers responsible for packaging products. Thus far, Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California have enacted extended producer-responsibility laws. The EPR laws assign both financial and operational responsibility for the end of life of products, and are an important tool for …
In 2021, an unidentified person hacked the computer controlling the water system in Oldsmar, Fla., and increased the concentration of sodium hydroxide 100 times the normal amount, in an attempt to poison people. That same year, an unidentified hacker used a stolen password to delete certain programs from a water treatment program in the San …
Companies operating in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia – whose operations involve the release of emissions — will need to consult the Environmental Protection Agency’s Revised Cross-State Air Pollution Update Rule to determine whether their operations might be affected by the Federal Implementation Plan. …
A few hours after dinner time on Feb. 3, and approximately 20 miles following a dramatic slow-down from a speed of 50 miles per hour to about half that, a Norfolk Southern freight train consisting of 38 cars – 11 of which were carrying hazardous materials – derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Although the derailment …