It has not been a good run for plaintiffs in private climate change litigation. As we noted last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal in Comer v. Murphy Oil. Now, on Monday, the Supreme Court denied...more
5/23/2013
- Climate Change SCOTUS
Last week, in Styrene Information and Research Center v. Sebelius, Judge Reggie Walton of the District Court for the District of Columbia rejected challenges to the decision by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to list styrene...more
5/20/2013
- Cancer HHS Listing Standards
Readers of this blog will recall the bizarre history of Comer v. Murphy Oil. In 2005, Plaintiffs brought tort claims against major GHG emitters, claiming that those emissions, by causing global warming, led to plaintiffs’...more
5/17/2013
- Dismissals Standing
On Tuesday, MassDEP announced release of its updated Solid Waste Master Plan, subtitled “Pathway to Zero Waste.” The Plan’s most significant discussion relates to the state of the solid waste market and the Plan’s goal for...more
5/8/2013
- Department of Environmental Protection Recycling Waste
In a decision that should not have come as a surprise to anyone, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday, in Conservation Northwest v. Sherman, that the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies implementing the...more
4/30/2013
- Consent Decrees FLPMA
I have previously posted about Cass Sunstein’s efforts to bring cost-benefit analysis to government regulation. On Friday, E&E News reported on Sunstein’s new book, Simpler: The Future of Government, noting that Sunstein...more
4/8/2013
As we noted last month, the Supreme Court has determined that logging roads are not point sources subject to stormwater regulation under the Clean Water Act. On Wednesday, in Ecological Rights Foundation v. Pacific Gas and...more
4/5/2013
On Thursday, EPA finalized revisions to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS (also known as “Utility MACT”). The most significant change was to revise the mercury emissions standard from 0.0002 pounds per...more
4/1/2013
- Boiler MACT Rule EPA
Yesterday, in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, the Supreme Court ruled that runoff from logging roads does not constitute a discharge from a point source that requires an NPDES permit. The decision upholds...more
3/21/2013
- Discharge of Pollutants EPA Logging NPDES SCOTUS
I have previously blogged about how strange our politics has become, when cap-and-trade programs, previously touted by conservatives and viewed skeptically by environmentalists as a “license to pollute,” somehow become for...more
3/12/2013
- Cap-and-Trade Climate Change
On Wednesday, in Alabama Environmental Council v. EPA, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected EPA’s 2011 disapproval of Alabama’s opacity regulation. The case involves relatively obscure provisions of the Clean Air Act,...more
3/11/2013
- Clean Air Act DOJ EPA Opacity Regulations SIP
In addition to its MCP package, MassDEP has also released its formal regulatory reform proposals for its water, wastewater, wetlands, and waterways programs. As with the MCP proposal, the water package took longer than it...more
3/6/2013
- MassDEP Wastewater Water Wetlands
As readers of this blog know, EPA’s use of guidance is a frequent pet peeve of mine. The issue has arisen with particular force in connection with EPA’s efforts to define Clean Water Act jurisdiction following the Supreme...more
2/27/2013
- Clean Water Act EPA Obama Administration OMB Wetlands
It was a busy week on the climate change front in Boston. First, RGGI announced a new Model Rule. Under the new Model Rule, summarized here, the 2014 cap would be reduced by 45%, from 165 million tons to 91 million tons. ...more
2/11/2013
- Climate Change Greenhouse Gas Emissions Sea Levels
Last week, MassDEP released new guidance on how it is assessing exposures to TCE in light of EPA new assessment of TCE risks released in September 2011. The biggest issue is that concerns about fetal exposure have caused...more
1/30/2013
- Air Quality Standards EPA Imminent Harm MassDEP
