Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
On July 28, 2022, the Environmental protection Agency (“EPA”) released its preliminary 2021 Toxics Release Inventory (“TRI”). The purpose of the TRI is to give the public critical information regarding chemical releases, waste management, and pollution prevention undertaken at both federal and industrial facilities in the United States. The TRI program was created by …
In June 1989, then-President George H. W. Bush proposed revisions to the Clean Air Act designed to reduce what were perceived as three of the largest threats to the environment at the time: toxic air emissions, acid rain, and urban air pollution. More specifically, Section 112r of what became the Clean Air Act Amendments of …
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that President Biden signed into law on August 16 ran, all told, about 725 pages. One of the more complex and—for businesses—interesting portions of this law involves its restructuring and expanding of clean-energy tax credits, which may provide opportunities for companies operating in and around the clean-energy area. The IRA increased the tax …
Following a study of 100 commercial sterilizer facilities, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on August 3 it would takes steps to inform communities throughout the country about the risks posed by ethylene oxide (EtO) emissions from 23 of specific sterilizer facilities. The agency further announced that, using data from the same study as well …