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A Snowman Analogy for EPA's WOTUS Effort on the First Snowy Day in Boston!

Lara Beaven, the excellent reporter on all things having to do with the Clean Water Act at Inside EPA, shares what we might expect from EPA and the Supreme Court of the United States in the year just beginning as the longest...more

Merely Manufacturing PFAS Isn't Enough (Yet) to Make You Responsible for Cleaning Them Up

This morning we have a seventy five page decision by a Federal District Court Judge in New York dismissing a lawsuit by a water supplier against the nation's most well-known manufacturer of PFAS to recover the costs of...more

When It Comes To PFAS, Perfect Can Be The Enemy Of Good

Inside EPA reports that six North Carolina-based NGOs, represented by a prior EPA Deputy Administrator and Senior Policy Counsel, think EPA should modify its incredibly ambitious PFAS road map to include toxicity testing of...more

The Navy Is Polluting Another Pacific Island?

News this morning that fuel spills from a Navy depot on the Big Island of Hawaii are allegedly polluting the Island's water supply. This may sound familiar. Just last year, the United States Supreme Court told Guam that it...more

Will it make any practical difference if scientists finally crack the nuclear fusion nut?

This morning David Abel reports in The Boston Globe reports that scientists at MIT and elsewhere have made significant progress toward doing something that has long been thought impossible -- harnessing nuclear fusion to...more

Another Day, Another Weaponization of the Courts to Try to Prevent Renewable Energy

Another lawsuit has been filed in Federal Court in an attempt to sink the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Nantucket. At first glance, this lawsuit was brought by a coalition of line fishermen and related businesses...more

EPA's Stormwater General Permit is Safe. Does it Matter?

A Colorado-based NGO has dropped its 9th Circuit lawsuit challenging EPA's Multi-Sector General Permit for stormwater discharges associated with industrial facilities. On one hand, this is a victory for EPA which...more

Another Maui Case in the Mountains

Last week another NGO filed suit against another operator of a wastewater treatment facility, this one in the mountains of Montana, complaining of "excess" nitrogen in the treated effluent from the wastewater treatment...more

What Steve Martin Might Say About PFAS!

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 Seeks to Avoid Second Trip to the Supreme Court with the Sacketts

The Sacketts of Idaho want the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene on their behalf for a second time. Now, just weeks before the ten year anniversary of the Sackett's first successful trip to the Supreme Court,...more

Now that you mention it, why don't we have a "Comprehensive National Wetland Protection Act"?

The Dean of Environmental Law bloggers, Seth Jaffe, does me the honor of a thoughtful response to my concern about whether EPA's and the Army Corps of Engineers' proposed definition of Waters of the United States, and...more

We have a new EPA definition of "Waters of the United States" but if you were looking for a bright line you're going to be...

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

What are Courts supposed to do when the Executive Branch says it is incapable of doing its job?

This week the Massachusetts Attorney General joined the Department of Justice in asking the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn what has been the law in the First Circuit for thirty years -- one can't bring a citizen...more

Another State Proposes a PFAS Limit While EPA Tries to Catch Up

Bloomberg Environment reports the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will set a drinking water limit for two of the thousands of "forever chemicals" known as PFAS joining several other states that have already set limits of their...more

Biden Billions for PFAS in Drinking Water

The monumental infrastructure bill that President Biden signed yesterday will send $10 billion to the States to pass on to drinking water suppliers to test for the "forever chemicals" known collectively as PFAS and then...more

Can we please stop falling back?

My friend, Sam Gutter, writes this morning about the Sunshine Protection Act, federal legislation that would make Daylight Savings Time a year round thing. It is worth a quick read if you, like me, have dreaded turning the...more

11/8/2021  /  Proposed Legislation

Another Critically Important Clean Energy Project Suffers a NIMBY Setback!

While world leaders meet in Glasgow over the seemingly insurmountable crisis caused by Greenhouse Gas supercharged climate change, approximately 60 percent of Maine voters have now opposed a one billion dollar project already...more

As the PFAS Panic Continues, EPA Tries to Keep Up with the States

EPA has released its risk assessment for GenX, one of the hundreds of "forever chemicals" known collectively as PFAS that are ubiquitous in our environment owing to decades of use in everything from fire suppressants to pizza...more

A new layer to EPA's PFAS roadmap

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

You should care that the First Circuit decided yesterday to reconsider (again) its respect for the role of Federal and State...

This week the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided to rehear, en banc, the argument of a Massachusetts-based NGO that a 2014 Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Administrative Consent Order did not preempt...more

The end of the road in Maui? - October 2021

Traveling the long and winding road to Hana in Maui is one of the most beautiful experiences one can have in the United States. I'm not sure anyone would say the same thing about the long and winding litigation road taken to...more

EPA's Ambitious PFAS Road Map Is Out. How Lost Will We Be When EPA Reaches its Many Destinations?

EPA has released its ambitious and wide-ranging plan for addressing the ubiquitous "forever" chemicals known collectively as PFAS. The PFAS Road Map, developed by an EPA task force co-chaired by New England's own Acting...more

Baby Steps Toward a New WOTUS Rule

In What About Bob, a movie worth seeing only if you, like me, think every film including Bill Murray is worth seeing, the fictional guru Dr. Leo Marvin wrote a book called "Baby Steps." The theme of "Baby Steps" is that no...more

The end of the (most recent) WOTUS beginning?

Lara Beaven, of Inside EPA, reports this afternoon that EPA has shared with the White House Office of Management and Budget what EPA management hopes will be a "durable" definition of "waters of the United States." Such a...more

What isn't a "pollutant" requiring a permit under the Clean Water Act?

The County of Maui had another day in court this week, this time pleading with Federal District Judge Mollway to reconsider her renewed decision that the discharge of treated effluent from the Maui waste water treatment...more

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