Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
On April 8, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an updated toxicity assessment for perfluorobutane sulfuric acid (PFBS). This assessment comes as part of the EPA’s larger PFAS Action Plan, aimed to increase the amount of research and publicly available information on chemicals in the PFAS family. PFBS, which is part of the …
Verso Corporation and Verso Luke LLC, owners of the now closed Luke Paper Mill, became the latest potentially responsible parties (PRP) to resolve claims against them for discharging waste into the North Branch Potomac River. The mill manufactured paper products along the river, which straddles the Maryland-West Virginia border. On April 6, 2019, a fisherman reported to Maryland that …
On April 1, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit—in a unanimous decision—affirmed the dismissal of the City of New York’s climate change lawsuit filed against a number of global oil manufacturers that sought climate change-related infrastructure damages. The issue resolved by the federal appellate court was whether municipalities could seek to …
In a bid to curb the emission of greenhouse gasses and reduce American dependence on foreign oil sources, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which included the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The RFS imposes Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO) on transportation fuel producers in the U.S., requiring them to include a threshold amount—increasing annually—of …
On March 29, 2021, the Biden administration announced a plan to expand offshore wind power along the East Coast. One area that may be part of such expansion is the New York Bight, which is a geological area that describes a swath of shallow waters along the Atlantic coast, spanning from the Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point at the eastern tip of Long …
On Thursday, March 18, 2021, Congressional members who drafted the Environmental Justice for All Act (EJAA) reintroduced the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, co-chair and co-founder of the Senate’s first environmental justice caucus, is co-sponsoring a parallel bill moving through the Senate. Similar to environmental justice legislation recently …
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, remains an ever-present topic on the national political stage when discussing climate change and energy sources. During the first week of March, two articles discussing the health effects of fracking in southwestern Pennsylvania were published, garnering significant media attention to the issue. On March 1, 2021, Environmental Health News released the …
The newly re-established White House Interagency Working Group (IWG) on social cost of greenhouse gases (SC-GHG) recently released interim estimates for the social cost of carbon (S-CO2), social cost of nitrous oxide (S-N20), and social cost of methane (S-CH4), collectively referred to as the SC-GHG, in accordance with President Biden’s directives set forth in one …
The door is now closed on conducting high volume hydraulic fracking in the Delaware River basin (DRB). On February 25, 2021, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted to finalize the temporary fracking ban they instituted in 2010 due to concerns over potential water pollution, which resulted from fracking wastewater. The DRBC was created in 1961 …
In early February, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) regarding its audit policy program, which is officially called, “Incentives for Self-Policing: Discovery, Disclosure, Correction and Prevention of Violations” (Audit Policy). The purpose of the Audit Policy, originally effected in 1996, is to safeguard human health and the environment by, according …