Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
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 …
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 …
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 …
As the next bellwether glyphosate case against Roundup producer Monsanto begins a bifurcated trial on February 25 that places science and causation evidence in the forefront, last week, the journal Mutation Research published a study challenging the prevailing opinions of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the European Food Safety Authority, the European Chemicals …
On February 6, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its updated Water Quality Trading Policy (Updated Policy). The Updated Policy is an effort to respond to a growing environmental crisis — the over-enrichment of freshwater and coastal ecosystems with nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus). Sources of nutrients include agriculture run-off, sewage treatment plants, and …
Earlier today, the EPA’s Acting Administrator, Andrew Wheeler, announced a nationwide PFAS Action Plan. An EPA official described the plan as the “most comprehensive action plan for a chemical of concern ever undertaken by the agency.” The plan describes actions that are under way and slated for future action. In particular, the plan discusses: moving …
It’s no secret that more and more states are investigating PFAS chemicals to determine whether regulation is wise. The U.S. Government has been grappling with the same issues. Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), including PFAS, are of great interest to regulators, water treatment utilities, the general public and scientists. When considering, for example, 2016 data …
Despite booming operations due to shale gas discoveries in recent years, the business climate for the oil and gas industry in the western United States is suffering because of recent political changes and public concerns over, well, climate change. We start in New Mexico, where Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham inked an executive order in January calling …
As the United States Environmental Protection Agency continues its battle with the state of California over fuel efficiency requirements for new vehicles, a new area of conflict has opened: the state of Colorado. California is the only state that has a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act to impose its own vehicle fuel standards. …
On Wednesday, January 30, 2019, the Attorney Generals of New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, along with the City of New York, joined forces to bring a lawsuit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency and its acting Administrator, Andrew Wheeler. The coalition is led by Letitia James, the newly elected Attorney …