Posted on May 30, 2024 by F. William Brownell There appears to be a consensus on the need for more efficient permitting of energy infrastructure to support the nation’s transition to cleaner generation.  But how best to achieve that objective is a matter of controversy.  The regulatory initiatives of the Biden Administration, in some regards, appear to unnecessarily impede rather than to promote that objective.  A more holistic approach to permitting reform might be worth considering.  Last year began with the Biden Administration’s national climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, exp ..read more

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Jeff Porter Last week our nation’s highest court was scheduled to decide whether to hear the City and County of San Francisco’s appeal of Ninth Circuit split decision upholding an EPA NPDES permit issued to the City and County containing two narrative prohibitions on discharges from the Oceanside combined sewer system and wastewater treatment facility. One of those prohibitions was of discharges from the Oceanside facility that “cause or contribute to violations of applicable water quality standards.”  This was only months after the Supreme Court’s opinion ..read more

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Susan M. Cooke A recent news article piqued my interest in a potential hazard for librarians handling Victorian era books with Emerald green book covers – arsenic contamination from dyes once used to produce a brilliant green hue, most especially in cloth book bindings.  About five years ago, Dr. Melissa Tedone identified friable arsenic while repairing the cloth binding of a book at the Winterthur Library. In response, she and Dr. Rosie Grayburn, both of whom are affiliated with the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware, establis ..read more

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Steven Chester In mid-April of this year, the Climate XChange, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing state climate policy, announced that it, along with RMI and the Evergreen Collaborative, had reviewed “6,795 pages of state climate plans.”  These plans had been submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. Before considering several key requirements of the CPRG program, let’s give credit where it is due and thank the Climate XChan ..read more

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Seth Jaffe Last Friday, EPA formally designated perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) – including their salts and structural isomers! – as hazardous substances under CERCLA. I cannot really quarrel with the underlying decision to list PFOA and PFOS. Given the developing evidence about the risks that they pose, it’s difficult to argue that they are not in fact “hazardous substances.” Of course, that’s not going to be the end of the story. As Robert Redford famously asked at the end of The Candidate, the real question is what do we do ..read more

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Jeff Porter DOJ and EPA have submitted their brief arguing that the Supreme Court should leave alone a split Ninth Circuit decision upholding a NPDES permit condition prohibiting the permittees, the City and County of San Francisco, from “causing or contributing” to any violation of “applicable water quality standards”. You might recall that when the City and County filed their appeal in February I predicted that this case would be responsible for EPA’s, DOJ’s and the Ninth Circuit’s third consecutive Clean Water Act defeat in our nation’s highest court.  This ..read more

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Seth Jaffe Last week, Inside EPA (subscription required) ran a story indicating that EPA is trying to figure out how to juggle some increasingly expensive cleanups with shortfalls in Superfund tax revenue.  The story notes that EPA is adding expensive new sites to the National Priorities List, while also anticipating new costs resulting from PFAS regulation and more stringent lead cleanup levels.  Can we just face facts and acknowledge that Superfund as presently constituted simply doesn’t work?  It wouldn’t even be fair to say that Superfund is broke ..read more

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Jeff Porter EPA picked another Clean Water Act fight with the United States Supreme Court last week and I don’t understand why EPA thinks it is a fight it can win.  As many of you know, the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act is now the shortest it has been in over forty years as a result of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Sackett v. EPA. In Sackett, a majority of the members of our nation’s highest court held, over the strenuous objection of EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, that Waters of the United States are only relatively p ..read more

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Dennis H. Treacy Credit: Encyclopedia Virginia. Credit: Encyclopedia Virginia. Credit: Encyclopedia Virginia. Fifty years ago the Commonwealth of Virginia experienced a human health and environmental crisis when the insecticide Kepone was discovered in the blood of manufacturing workers and in the fish and sediment of the James River at Hopewell Virginia. For those of us who participated on response teams the memories are vivid. But most have forgotten or never knew the fearful moments about a chemical that gave workers the “Kepone shakes” and closed commercial ..read more

Posted on March 26, 2024 by JB Ruhl The American College of Environmental Lawyers (“ACOEL”) announces its annual Stephen E. Herrmann Environmental Writing Award (“Herrmann Award”) for the 2023-24 academic year. Stephen E. Herrmann is a distinguished, nationally recognized environmental lawyer. For over forty years, Mr. Herrmann has been a leader in the area of environmental law as a practitioner, teacher, and writer. Through this award, the ACOEL honors his leadership in environmental law and his role in the formation of the ACOEL. The ACOEL is a professional association of distinguished lawye ..read more