Less than ten days after setting drinking water standards for six of the hundreds of chemicals known collectively as PFAS, EPA has now identified two of those PFAS that have been widely used for decades, PFOA and PFOS, as...more
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...more
Law 360 is reporting on yesterday's hearing in the United States' litigation against the State of Texas to cause the removal of an unpermitted “marine barrier” placed by the State of Texas in the Rio Grande River. Putting...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
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
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
Those of us on the east coast have heard that the Great Salt Lake has receded to the verge of a public health crisis, including because toxins in the sediment that have been underwater for millennia may soon may soon be...more
Just before the July 4th holiday, I was wondering out loud what was to be gained by having a Federal District Court decide the merits of a challenge to EPA's eighth attempt to determine the reach of the Clean Water Act. ...more
7/12/2023
/ Clean Water Act ,
Environmental Policies ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
NGOs ,
Rapanos v US ,
Sackett ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
US Army Corps of Engineers ,
Waters of the United States ,
Wetlands
Bloomberg is reporting that 3M and the two companies responsible for the liability of what used to be DuPont have agreed to pay $100 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the City of Rome, Georgia for the cost of engineering...more
6/2/2023
/ 3M Company ,
Drinking Water ,
DuPont ,
Environmental Policies ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Environmental Violations ,
Manufacturers ,
PFAS ,
Public Health ,
Punitive Damages ,
Toxic Chemicals ,
Toxic Exposure
Five Justices of our nation's highest court have now provided a definition of "Waters of the United States" that will be binding on the Executive and Judicial Branches at least until Congress says otherwise. As Justice...more
6/1/2023
/ Clean Water Act ,
Commerce Clause ,
Environmental Policies ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Federal Jurisdiction ,
Inland Waterways ,
Navigable Waters ,
Regulatory Reform ,
Sackett ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
US Army Corps of Engineers ,
Waters of the United States ,
Wetlands
Hundreds and hundreds of claims for personal injury and property damage associated with PFAS contamination have been accumulating in the courtroom of a Federal Judge in South Carolina. A little over four years ago the Federal...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
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
The Federal government has proposed to ban fast ferries to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket between November 1 and May 30 of each year in an effort to protect the 350 North Atlantic Right Whales remaining on the planet....more
Just before the Labor Day holiday, a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge allowed the Nantucket Conservation Commission to move one step closer to causing what the Town's expert calls dramatic shoreline realignment on the...more
Lara Beaven of Inside EPA reports that the House Appropriations Committee intends to give EPA every dollar it has requested to implement its ambitious and wide-ranging plan for addressing the ubiquitous "forever" chemicals...more
EPA has announced that the second part of its eighth attempt to define the reach of the Clean Water Act will be delayed until November of 2023. At the same time EPA announced it will move forward with finalizing part one of...more
Inside EPA reports that EPA has been looking at "techniques and procedures" to apply CERCLA, also known as the Superfund statute, differently to "folks who are not responsible for causing" PFAS releases even though those...more
As the International Summit on Plastic Pollution gets underway, I'll be sharing some of the conclusions reached by a team of French and American lawyers regarding the very different responses of France and the United States...more
The collapse of a section of Newport's Cliff Walk has captured our attention. In a Boston Globe report, Dean Greenstein of Roger Williams University puts this newsworthy event in geologic perspective - our planet is...more
All the pressure Congress is all of a sudden exerting on the Executive Branch of our Federal Government when it comes to PFAS brings to mind a great line by one of the great comics of my youth. Steve Martin exclaimed "you...more
EPA has published its most recent proposed definition of "Waters of the United States" with an eye toward finalizing that definition next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.
Before I get to the...more
Yesterday EPA announced a new layer to EPA's PFAS roadmap unveiled only last week. Now four of the hundreds of chemicals collectively known as PFAS will eventually be regulated as hazardous waste under RCRA in response to a...more
Kate Orff, a landscape architect and MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" recipient, is working hard to protect the rest of us from the inevitable consequences of a Green House Gas supercharged climate. The New Yorker's...more