Last August, when EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers published their tenth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act, the Agencies said that regulation involved no exercise of discretion because it...more
A little over five years ago, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation gave Federal Judge Richard Gergel of South Carolina the burden of disposing of any cases “alleg[ing] that AFFF products used at airports, military...more
Lara Beaven, of Inside PFAS Policy, has an excellent report on the Defense Department's motion to dismiss claims for injunctive relief against the military in the AFFF multi-district litigation continuing before Federal...more
The United States Supreme Court isn't done with the Clean Water Act and EPA's interpretation of it. This month the City and County of San Francisco asked the nation's highest court to overturn a split Ninth Circuit Court of...more
On March 5th, three Judges of the First Circuit Court of Appeals will hear from lawyers for residents of Nantucket who sued to stop the Vineyard Wind project, the first utility-scale offshore wind energy project in in the...more
Last week a DC Federal Judge vacated EPA's approval of the State of Florida's application to assume the Army Corps of Engineers' authority to issue “dredge and fill” permits under Section 404 of the Federal Clean Water Act....more
Some of you may be old enough to remember the movie Wall Street and, if you are, you might remember that just before Bud is taken into federal custody, Lou says “man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him....more
While I was on vacation last week, EPA proposed to identify as “hazardous constituents” nine of the “forever chemicals" known collectively as PFAS. EPA's proposal will now be subject to public comment before perhaps being...more
There was a lot to like about what Governor Healey had to say about our rapidly changing climate in her State of the Commonwealth speech Tuesday evening, especially about her expectation that Massachusetts will be the leader...more
Lara Beaven of Inside PFAS Policy is reporting on another PFAS citizen suit under the Federal Clean Water Act. This one, by Tennessee Riverkeeper, alleges that PFAS are being discharged from a former Lebanon, Tennessee...more
Sam Hess of Inside EPA is reporting that the U.S. Navy has agreed to apply for a Federal Clean Water Act NPDES permit authorizing the continuing use of the firing range at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren on the...more
Just before the holidays I wrote about three Judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who decided, over the Army Corps of Engineers' objection, to apply the Supreme Court's Sackett test for determining whether something...more
A Federal Judge in Oklahoma has ordered the ejectment of 84 wind turbines on 8400 acres of Osage County Oklahoma. The problem for the developers of the wind farm is that they leased the surface of those 8400 acres from the...more
Garry Lewis owns 2000 acres in Livingston Parish, Louisiana and he has been fighting with the Army Corps of Engineers over whether any of those 2000 acres are wetlands subject to Federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction for over...more
Many of the nation's public water suppliers and certain manufacturers of PFAS used in fire fighting foam are one step closer to massive class action settlements after a “fairness hearing” before Federal District Court Judge...more
You may have thought the movie Oppenheimer would be the only blockbuster involving Los Alamos, New Mexico this year. But now EPA has invoked its rarely used Residual Designation Authority under section 402 of the Clean Water...more
When EPA published its most recent rule specifying the role of States and Tribes in the Federal permitting of discharges into Waters of the United States, I predicted it was only a matter of time before we'd see another...more
12/7/2023
/ Biden Administration ,
Clean Water Act ,
Discharge of Pollutants ,
Environmental Litigation ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Louisiana ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 401 ,
Tribal Governments ,
Trump Administration ,
Water Quality ,
Waters of the United States
The Healey-Driscoll Administration's announcement of its ResilientCoasts Initiative garnered a lot of attention, as it should have. If you believe the scientists (and, if you don't, you might as well stop reading here), we...more
Just before the Thanksgiving holiday EPA issued draft guidance regarding when a discharge of a “pollutant” to groundwater is the “functional equivalent” of a discharge to a Water of the United States requiring a NPDES permit...more
11/28/2023
/ Clean Water Act ,
Discharge of Pollutants ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Groundwater ,
Hawaii Wildlife Fund v County of Maui ,
New Guidance ,
NPDES ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
Waste Treatment Facilities ,
Waters of the United States
When EPA and the Corps of Engineers published their tenth attempt to determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act, I said the only question remaining was how many of the States and NGOs who challenged EPA's and the...more
Yesterday, I spoke with Sarah Mattalian, an Inside EPA reporter writing a story about the suggestion by an EPA official that EPA might require additional PFAS investigations and clean up at properties that had already been...more
11/15/2023
/ Brownfield Properties ,
CERCLA ,
Chemicals ,
Environmental Policies ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Groundwater ,
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) ,
Investigations ,
PFAS ,
Public Health ,
Remediation ,
Site Remediation ,
Soil
Law 360 is reporting this morning on an NGO petition to the Army Corps of Engineers demanding that it not apply a Nationwide Permit covering the construction of "pipelines that transport water, sewage, and ‘other substances’”...more
Since EPA published its PFAS road map just a little more than two years ago, I've often commended EPA for its ambitious plan to regulate the forever and everywhere chemicals known collectively as PFAS. After all, if, as EPA...more
Over two years ago I wrote about a lawsuit filed by a Connecticut-based solar farm developer with a summer home in Martha's Vineyard seeking to enjoin the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. This particular...more
Our climate emergency has spurred all kinds of innovation around alternatives to the combustion of fossil fuels to generate energy. Today's Boston Globe reports on two different streams of that innovation that couldn't be...more