Focus
ALLEN MATKINS - Jun 20 As of August 30, 2018, businesses will be subject to new warning requirements under the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (aka Prop 65). The Prop 65 regulatory amendments (Amendments), adopted in 2016 and effective August 30, 2018, provide new guidance for providing both generic and tailored warnings for various types of chemical exposures. The Amendments will significantly change the warnings already required at many commercial establishments such as multi-tenant commercial office buildings, restaurants, hotels, parking lots, industrial facilities, and vehicle repair and service stations. Recently proposed regulations may soon require specific warnings for rental properties as well.
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Jun 19 Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper announced Tuesday that his state plans to join a dozen others that will refuse to go along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s possible rollback of vehicle emissions regulations. Instead, Colorado will invoke a Clean Air Act provision that allows those states to follow California in continuing to pursue the aggressive fuel efficiency goals set during the Obama administration. Those goals aim to have new cars and SUVs averaging 55 miles per gallon by 2025. The EPA has not yet publicly released its plan, but a draft reviewed by several federal officials calls for freezing the current federal mileage standard in place for six years. Under such a plan, the coalition of states led by California, which represents more than a third of all vehicles sold nationwide, would be preempted from imposing their own rules.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Jun 19 The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) said Tuesday it will begin testing in July the hilltop portion of the Hunters Point Shipyard development, the area known as Parcel A, where 450 homes are either completed or under construction. The Navy will pay for the work, which is expected to be completed in the fall. CDPH says the testing should put to rest the fears that harmful levels of radioactive materials are buried beneath the parcel. But some experts and shipyard residents are already questioning whether the proposed method of testing — using sodium iodide detectors without any soil sampling — will adequately determine whether the soil at Parcel A is clean. The plan to retest the property — the site of the Bay Area’s largest redevelopment project — comes after a year in which both the Navy and the U.S. EPA have called into question cleanup and soil testing work done at the development by Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering firm, which has been accused of fraud in its testing of the site, formerly home to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory from 1946 to 1969.
THE HILL - Jun 19 The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the White House agency responsible for coordinating compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), published a notice on Wednesday soliciting input from the public on potential changes to NEPA’s implementing regulations, which govern how federal agencies analyze the environmental impacts of their decisions. The CEQ said in the notice that it wants comments “on potential revisions to update the regulations and ensure a more efficient, timely, and effective NEPA process consistent with the national environmental policy stated in NEPA.” The solicitation stems from an August 2017 executive order President Trump signed that aimed to ease the permitting process for highways, bridges, and other infrastructure projects.
SAN FERNANDO VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL - Jun 20 The U.S. EPA has ordered two aerospace manufacturers to spend more than $21 million to clean up groundwater contamination at a Superfund site near the Hollywood Burbank Airport, the agency announced Wednesday. Honeywell International Inc. is required to spend $10 million to construct four extraction wells by 2019 and create a water treatment system. Lockheed Martin Corp. must also build four extraction wells by 2020 and conduct a feasibility study to determine the extent of the contamination. The total cost to Lockheed is expected to be $11 million. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power draws groundwater for the city’s municipal water supply from seven wells near the site, which is one of four Superfund sites in the San Fernando Valley.
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE - Jun 14 Riverside County Superior Court Judge Sharon Waters last Thursday set aside the Moreno Valley City Council’s August 2015 approvals of the environmental impact report for the World Logistics Center in Moreno Valley and a division of project land into 26 parcels. The judge’s order also bars the city from issuing any permits or land use entitlements that would allow the developer, Highland Fairview, to begin building the project, which is located in eastern Moreno Valley and would blanket 10 percent of the 51-square-mile city. The World Logistics Center envisions more than 40 million square feet of warehouses being built on 2,610 acres, the equivalent of 700 football fields.
