Just a few years ago, before the Trump Administration EPA revoked and replaced the Obama Administration EPA's regulations determining the reach of the Clean Water Act, the Obama Administration EPA regulations were the law in...more
Last week, a split panel in the Ninth Circuit concluded that ordinary citizens had a sufficient interest in the existence and accuracy of information a NPDES permit holder was required to submit to the Government to confer...more
Yesterday a split three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that a clay manufacturer is entitled to a new trial of Federal Clean Water Act claims against it because the District Court had instructed...more
Friday, a Federal District Court Judge in California joined most other Federal District Court Judges in concluding that EPA's Clean Water Act regulations should not be vacated while EPA considers how it might revise them. ...more
EPA's post-Maui statement on the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act has joined other regulations and guidance applying the Clean Water Act from the Obama and Trump Administrations on the ash heap of history.
It is...more
In June, EPA said it intended its current regulations determining the reach of the Clean Water Act to remain in place while it developed new regulations doing the same thing differently. It has repeated that position in...more
This morning's editorial in The Boston Globe, "Offshore wind could die in the regulatory doldrums", is something one might have also read in The Wall Street Journal. If that doesn't catch your attention, please know it is a...more
News this morning that an Arizona Federal District Court Judge has done what many of us expected would happen eventually -- purport to strike down the Trump Administration's regulation establishing the reach of the Federal...more
Much has been written over the past few days about Boston Acting Mayor Janey's decision to cut and run on the Downtown Municipal Harbor Plan. Pretty much all of the many candidates to be the City's next Mayor were critical...more
Today brings another lawsuit in federal court by NIMBYies, this time on Nantucket, seeking to kill the Vineyard Wind project. As in a lawsuit filed by a Martha's Vineyard NIMBY earlier this summer, the Nantucket NIMBYies...more
We know it is going to cost millions if not billions of dollars to protect our coastal communities from the rising seas and storm surge that are certain no matter what we do to reduce our GHG emissions from now on. How to...more
Inside EPA reports that a Pacific Northwest NGO has asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to order the United States Environmental Protection Agency to act on the NGO's demand that EPA revoke its delegation of Clean Water...more
One of the many things I've never understood about soccer (football in the rest of the world) is that the referee can decide, or not, to add "extra time" at the end of the game to account for what she sees as unusual events. ...more
Yesterday, the Sacketts of Idaho were handed their most recent litigation defeat by a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In ruling against the Sacketts the panel held that Justice Kennedy's 2006...more
Much has been written about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report this week telling us what we already knew -- our planet is hotter than it has been since the beginning of the last ice age, we're...more
Friday EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announced that between now and Labor Day they will be listening to stakeholders as they kick off what will be the eighth attempt to resolve by regulation the reach of the Federal...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
This morning, Inside EPA reports on the challenges the regulated community faces because the Federal Government is considerably behind several states in the race to regulate any number of the hundreds if not thousands of...more
Some of you remember summer visits to the Drive-In to see the horror movies that dominated the 1980s. You remember the villain lurking outside the house and screaming at the oblivious occupants to get out, which they never...more
Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would require EPA to regulate PFAS under every Federal environmental law that might possibly apply. Nearly two dozen Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the...more
Many of you will remember that the sixth time EPA attempted to resolve the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act by regulation, during the Obama Administration, the ensuing litigation resulted in the Obama Administration rule...more
The Arthashastra, a 2400 year old Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, tells us that the enemy of my enemy might be my friend. And that ancient proverb brings us to the lawsuit filed yesterday by a Connecticut-based solar farm...more
Late yesterday, Federal Judge Susan Oki Mollway, of the District of Hawaii, ruled that the County of Maui needs a Federal Clean Water Act NPDES permit for its groundwater discharge of treated water from its waste water...more
Inside EPA reports this morning that EPA is ready to propose the regulation of a group of 29 PFAS under the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act. It remains to be seen how long it will take EPA to implement such regulations....more
Yesterday the Government Accountability Office issued a lengthy report on enforcement of the NPDES provisions of the Federal Clean Water Act permitting discharges to Waters of the United States. Many of you know that all but...more