Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
Just last week, on October 3, 2022, Sackett v. EPA found itself once again before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments, its first appearance at SCOTUS having been a decade before. In January 2022, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sackett for a second time following remand, the petitioner Sacketts had amended their … Continued
Oil and gas manufacturers have long relied on a process known as “flaring” to limit the venting of natural gas from their refineries. Specifically, flaring is the process of burning natural gas escaping from oil and gas wells and aims at combusting the powerful greenhouse gas methane to minimize its emission. Flares are designed to eliminate 98% of the … Continued
On September 24, 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the establishment of a new office dedicated to advancing civil rights and environmental justice. The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) was created through the merger of three existing internal programs: the Office of Environmental Justice, the External Civil Rights Compliance Office, and … Continued
Paraquat dichloride is a synthetic chemical compound that has been used as an active ingredient in herbicide products sold in the United States since the mid-1960s. One of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S., it has been described as “a fast-acting, non-selective herbicide used in an array of agricultural and other settings” … … Continued
On September 19, 2022, a Cook County (Illinois) jury awarded $363 million to 70-year-old plaintiff Susan Kamuda in the first of many lawsuits against industrial sterilization company Sterigenics. These lawsuits accuse the company of a reckless, decades-long pollution of Willowbrook, Illinois with ethylene oxide. The jury in this case went beyond the damages requested by … Continued
The Delaware River Basin Commission (“DRBC”), the first government-and-state joint venture in river basin planning since the birth of the nation, itself, won a substantial—but narrow—victory on Friday when the 3rd Circuit ruled that individual state senators did not have standing to challenge the fracking ban in Northern PA inacted by DRBC in February of 2021. … Continued
As previously reported in ELM, microplastics – plastic fragments smaller than 5 millimeters in length – have been found everywhere from Antarctica (https://www.goldbergsegalla.com/wp/emerging-issues/microplastics-found-for-the-first-time-in-freshly-fallen-snow/) to human lung tissue (https://www.goldbergsegalla.com/wp/emerging-issues/study-finds-microplastics-in-human-lung-tissue/) to, especially, bodies of water (https://www.goldbergsegalla.com/wp/emerging-issues/can-biofilm-engineering-be-used-to-address-microplastics-pollution/). This ubiquity has led to an increased number of studies and ever-improving sampling methods for the purposes of reversing the omnipresence … Continued
While critics may say the federal government has been slow to react to PFAS, last week the EPA took its most aggressive stance — publishing its notice for a proposed federal rule to designate two specific PFAS compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as “hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), and now the clock is ticking. Found in surface water, air, soil, and even more recently food … Continued
Despite California’s most recent, two-year legislative session ending on September 1 with a flurry of new bills aimed at fighting global warming getting passed, one noticeable bill failed to pass on the last day. Senator Scott Wiener’s S.B. 260, i.e., California’s Climate Corporate Accountability Act, died on the legislative floor by one vote. Co-authored by … Continued
Friday of last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) published a proposed rule that would designate perfluorooctanoic acid (“PFOA”) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (“PFOS”), including their salts and structural isomers, as hazardous substances under section 102(a) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (commonly known as CERCLA). The designations, if finalized, could have … Continued