Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
While shifting political winds don’t literally blow through the trees, their force and impact can cause environmental policy to lurch back and forth. For instance, in 2020, during the final quarter of the first Trump administration, the White House Counsel on Environmental Quality (CEQ) took steps to change the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by …
California – as part of effort to reduce the environmental impact of maritime shipping, particularly within vulnerable port-side communities – has implemented one of the most ambitious port-emission control programs to date. California’s At-Berth Regulation (ABR), implemented in 2007, is a key environmental policy created to reduce air pollution from nonvehicular sources. Since 2014, the …
Following years of heightened concern about the dangers of exposure to ethylene oxide (EtO), increased regulatory oversight, and a steady hum of litigation, in 2025 it seems like things might be changing for the beleaguered industry dependent upon this highly effective but potentially cancer-causing sterilizing gas. With a new administration in the White House, a U.S. …
In a unanimous decision on July 23, 2025, the fifteen judges on the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), also known as the “World Court,” concluded that the production and consumption of fossil fuels “may constitute an internationally wrongful act attributable to that state.” The opinion also stated that limiting global warming to 1.5C …
The Environmental Protection Agency announced July 18 it would continue workforce reductions through the elimination of its Office of Research and Development, which provides the independent scientific research that underpins nearly all the agency’s policies and regulations. For decades, the science office has analyzed a multitude of risks, including the impacts of hazardous chemicals, hydraulic …
Earlier this month, chemical maker DuPont agreed to a $27 million settlement to resolve the Hoosick Falls class action, which involved allegations of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination of the upstate New York village’s water supply. In February 2016, class action, Baker, et al. v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., et al, was filed in …
Do you want to destroy PFAS? But why stop there? Continue on to convert them into high value fluorochemicals, and recover and reuse the phosphate salts. That’s what one new study claims it can do. The authors reacted PFAS with potassium phosphate salts under solvent-free mechanochemical conditions — a mineralization process enabling fluorine recovery as KF …
The EPA on July 2 issued a finalized interim rule, published six days later in the Federal Register, which delays implementation of certain National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) requirements for coke oven manufacturing facilities. According to the EPA, hazardous air pollutants (HAP) emitted from these coke oven manufacturing facilities can include benzene, …
Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation, also known as EPR laws, is a policy-based approach that holds producers accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products, particularly for take-back, recycling, and final disposal. Although various other countries have implemented EPR legislation as early as the 1990s, its adoption in the U.S. has been considerably slow, fragmented, and …
Last month, the New York State Assembly demurred from taking up a vote for the second time on the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (“PRRIA”). The PRRIA was designed to cause a restructuring of the life cycle of packaging within the state by fundamentally shifting the burden of handling packaging waste from municipalities and …