Seems like just yesterday that the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on New England Clean Energy Connect's challenge to the retroactive initiative petition that might have killed the project to get hydropower from Canada to...more
Yesterday President Biden vetoed the Congressional Review Act resolution that would have repealed EPA's eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act. In 1972 Congress overrode President Nixon's...more
Federal District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and various industry groups challenging EPA's eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the...more
Law360 shares the good news that three Judges in the First Circuit Court of Appeals have affirmed the Federal District Court's dismissal of claims by neighbors of Back Beach in Rockport. The NIMBYs sued the Town of Rockport...more
Inside EPA is reporting that the United States Forest Service is going to work with EPA to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit coverage under the Federal Clean Water Act authorizing it to...more
Sam Hess of Inside EPA points out that Judge Brown of Texas concluded that the United States Supreme Court's nearly forty year old precedent compelling the Judiciary to defer to Executive Branch interpretations of laws it is...more
Like I said at the beginning of the month, most of us have seen this sad movie before so it is no surprise that EPA's eighth attempt to define the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act will be the law in no more than 48 of the...more
The Boston Globe is reporting on NIMBY opposition to a clam shack on Nantucket's Straight Wharf. It seems that residents of the adjacent North Wharf are concerned that the clam shack will increase noise in the neighborhood...more
EPA continues to make measurable progress toward the milestones it established in its 2021 PFAS road map. It has arranged for an assessment of the risks posed by these "forever chemicals" and concluded, based on those...more
Law360 is reporting that a Federal District Court Judge in South Carolina is allowing NGOs, including the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, to continue their Clean Water Act citizen suit against the Army Corps of...more
EPA has now opposed the motions of the State of Kentucky and several industry groups to enjoin its eighth attempt to determine the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act. Much of the content of that opposition is not...more
Massachusetts State Representative Kate Hogan seems to make a lot of sense when she says, about the continued widespread use of the "forever chemicals" known as PFAS, that "if we don't prevent it, all we're doing is...more
Sir Winston Churchill famously said "those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Of course he didn't have the nearly four decade long controversy over the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act in mind but...more
This week our nation's highest court will decide whether to review the 6th Circuit's conclusion that a declaratory judgment of liability starts the statute of limitations clock for the liable party to bring a contribution...more
This week Sam Hess of Inside EPA asked me if I had an opinion as to why there were fewer lawsuits (so far) challenging EPA's eighth attempt to durably determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act than there were...more
This week three Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that a District Court Judge exceeded his authority in vacating an EPA regulation without first determining that the regulation was unlawful.
The Trump...more
Inside EPA reports that some House Democrats are criticizing their Republican colleagues for attempting to repeal EPA's eighth attempt to determine the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act by regulation. Like recent rules by...more
Three Judges of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals have dismissed the American Chemistry Council's complaint challenging EPA's interim health advisory levels for PFAS in drinking water. The ACC's case was dismissed, not for...more
Yesterday the Nantucket Residents Against Turbines were in Federal Court arguing the merits of their last ditch effort to stop the Vineyard Wind project which has taken ten years to plan and permit. ACKRat's lawsuit is one of...more
Everyone expected that EPA's eighth attempt to define the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act would end up in court. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that two groups of plaintiffs filed their lengthy complaints...more
Inside EPA is reporting this morning that a three judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has joined the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in upholding the constitutionality of the Congressional Review Act. The Act...more
Backwards, forwards, square and round. So goes a lyric by the late great Jeff Beck who died this week. Mr. Beck wasn't writing about the decades long war over the jurisdictional reach of the Federal Clean Water Act but the...more
Yesterday the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund announced it would comply with a Nantucket Conservation Commission enforcement order and remove a ”soft” coastal bank stabilization project it had constructed on the eastern bluff...more
Yesterday Maine's Supreme Judicial Court unanimously held that the 2021 referendum that purported to invalidate a lease essential to the New England Clean Energy Connect project violated the Contract Clause of the United...more
With apologies to Mr. Shakespeare, and respect to the American Water Works Association, PFOS and PFOA, only two of the hundreds of "forever chemicals" collectively known as PFAS, are either as concerning as the hundreds of...more