Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
On March 15, 2019, the EPA proposed as a Final Rule a scaled down version of the total ban on the use of methyl chloride in paint stripper. The EPA proposed the Final Rule in connection with its administration of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Under the scaled down version, methyl chloride is banned … Continued
Approximately seven months after a California state jury found that DeWayne Johnson’s workplace exposure to glyphosate-containing Roundup and Ranger Pro caused him to develop Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, another jury in California, this time in federal court, has arrived at the same conclusion. On Wednesday, March 20, 2019, in a trial overseen by U.S. District Judge Vince … Continued
Pennsylvania legislators have proposed a new law that would preserve the existence of nuclear power by funding operations via large-scale government subsidies. Lawmakers recently proposed “Keep Powering Pennsylvania” House Bill (HB) 11, which, if passed, would re-classify nuclear power as a qualifying energy resource under Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS) and effectively subsidize the entire industry within the state. As part of Pennsylvania’s larger … Continued
Late last week, a pair of lawsuits on water contamination were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of local water authorities. Back in the news is the emerging contaminant 1,4-dioxane, which made headlines in late 2017 in a related and similar groundbreaking lawsuit that sought to … Continued
We recently reported that the lately-inaugurated governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has taken a strong stance on environmental issues, including oil and gas development. Now, the state has taken further steps to enforce its contamination laws and improve the state’s environmental profile. Last week, the State of New Mexico filed suit against the … Continued
In what definitely is becoming a pattern, yet another climate change lawsuit has been dismissed. On February 19, 2019, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed the case Clean Air Council, et al. v. United States of America, Civ. No. 17-4977. With this dismissal, six significant climate change lawsuits, and … Continued
A collection of environmental groups have released a report claiming that the vast majority of coal ash ponds in the United States have leaked toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater. The report, based on monitoring data released by 250 power plants, found that 91 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power plants reported elevated levels of at … Continued
On March 1, 2019, new legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to classify per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as hazardous substances under Superfund. A similar bipartisan piece of legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2019. PFAS are a class of fluorinated chemicals that are found in consumer products such … Continued
Big news on the Clean Water Act (CWA). With the backdrop of a major circuit split (previously discussed here), the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Ninth Circuit case of County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund. The Supreme Court will now have to determine whether discharges of pollutants to surface waters … Continued
In what the Wall Street Journal touted as “(t)he First Climate Change Bankruptcy,” Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) filed for federal bankruptcy protection last month after claiming that it faced $30 billion dollars in liability for wildfires that ravaged California over the last several years. Investigators have determined that the California utility company caused at least … Continued