Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
The European Union plans to push back against the clean-tech tax breaks provided in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by easing subsidy rules and creating a new source of money to help member states compete with the United States. Some EU members see aspects of the IRA as discriminatory, designed to benefit U.S. climate tech …
The Environmental Protection Agency recently published a Cumulative Impacts Addendum (“Addendum”) to its Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (“EJ Legal Tools”), issued in May 2022. This Addendum builds on the cumulative impacts discussion in the EJ Legal Tools and provides additional detail and analysis regarding the EPA’s legal authority to address cumulative impacts affecting …
Right on the heels of the eye-popping $408 million settlement between a major commercial sterilizer and plaintiffs claiming injuries resulting from exposure to ethylene oxide (EtO) emitted from the company’s Illinois facility (covered by ELM here), the company now faces two different legal actions initiated by two new groups of plaintiffs but similarly stemming from …
Biden administration officials announced on December 20, 2022, that the U.S. Postal Service intends to purchase over 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028, which would create one of the nation’s largest electric fleets in an effort to fight climate change. To reach this goal, the USPS announced that it plans to purchase 60,000 so-called “Next Generation …
More and more state legislatures are looking to PFAS exposure as one of the main focuses of their new environmental regulations. As of this month, Maine banned the sale of residential carpets containing PFAS and became the first state to require companies to report products containing the chemicals. Maine’s law will ban all non-essential PFAS …
In early January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to revise and strengthen a key national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution, also known as PM2.5. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set two types of NAAQS: health-based standards, called primary standards, and standards to protect public welfare, called secondary standards. Based on …
On Jan. 18, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is seeking input regarding the development of Meat and Poultry Products (“MPP”) Effluent Limitations Guidelines Rulemaking Revision. As part of this process the EPA seeks to put together a Small Business Advocacy Review Panel. The EPA is looking to gather comments and suggestions from small entity representatives. Changes …
The pendulum of policy on the environment was sent pounding back toward regulation again when the Biden administration issued new directives for greenhouse gas emissions. The Interim Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change (“Interim Guidance”) seeks to: Clarify best practices for assessing greenhouse gases under the National Environmental Policy Act; Fast-track …
On January 9, 2023, Sotera Health Company announced it reached agreements to settle more than 870 ethylene-oxide cases pending against its subsidiaries, including Sterigenics, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill. and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The claims arose out of operations of Sterigenics’ Willowbrook, Ill. medical …
On the final day of 2022, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law the Cumulative Impacts Bill (CIB), which both houses of New York State’s legislature had passed eight months earlier in the year (language here: S.8830 and A.2103D). The legislation amends New York’s Environmental Quality Review Act by now requiring the State to …