EPA advisers, as well as agency staff economists, are signaling that officials face data quality hurdles in their effort to craft a study that quantifies the value of water to the U.S. economy -- a concern that may limit EPA's ability to cite the study's estimated benefits in any future bid to justify strict water quality controls.

States and environmentalists are criticizing EPA's recent justification for why it has delayed a proposed rule to revise its particulate matter national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS), saying the agency fails to explain why the delay is reasonable as they push for a court to impose a hard legal deadline on EPA for issuing the rule.

Republican lawmakers are calling on EPA's research office to begin releasing larger amounts of raw data underlying its scientific assessments ahead of peer reviews of the documents, an issue the lawmakers could opt to address in a planned reauthorization of the bill that created the agency's Office of Research & Development (ORD).

A Senate panel has narrowed the scope of an EPA greenhouse gas (GHG) lifecycle emissions analysis the agency would use to help determine eligibility for an existing “clean” fuel vehicle grant program, which could boost biofuels by avoiding a lifecycle analysis of their GHGs that activists say are much higher than biofuels makers claim.

EPA's proposed designation of areas in or out of attainment with its 2008 ozone standard is prompting a fight with states and environmentalists over how to define the size of nonattainment areas, with some states saying EPA goes too far by including counties near polluted urban centers, while activists say the approach is too narrow.

Environmentalists say EPA's recent rejection of palm oil qualifying as a biofuel feedstock reinforces their arguments in litigation challenging the agency's ability to accurately qualify the lifecycle emissions for other biofuels that qualified under the federal renewable fuel standard (RFS).

EPA officials say they are adding an additional peer review step at the start of its process for crafting its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) chemical risk assessments -- the latest in a series of new measures the agency is taking to improve its IRIS program and one long sought by industry before the agency's draft assessments are issued for review.

Dwindling budgets are pushing some states to consider returning their delegated Clean Air Act permitting programs to EPA unless they can raise fees charged to industry for Title V air permits in order to boost revenue, sources say, though fee increases may prove difficult if state lawmakers or industry oppose a hike in permit fees.

EPA and other agencies are stepping up efforts to monitor and possibly regulate contamination of groundwater supplies of drinking water by the highly-toxic pharmaceuticals used in chemotherapy treatment, which can remain harmful even after passing through wastewater treatment plants.

Activists are suing Texas for not accepting public input in new state permits that are among the first in the United States that seek to quantify emissions limits during startup, shutdown and planned maintenance (SSM) into enforceable permit provisions, which could set a precedent for other states to follow in crafting SSM permit limits.

Chemical industry representatives are stepping up their push to soften EPA's pending risk assessment of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), the ubiquitous water contaminant, visiting with EPA and Capitol Hill officials this week to outline their extensive new research that they say undermines the need for the agency's conservative assessment method.

Environmentalists are urging EPA and White House officials to consider a draft Indiana greenhouse gas (GHG) air permit that includes a limit reflecting carbon dioxide (CO2) capture as a model for EPA's GHG new source performance standard (NSPS) for new facilities, currently undergoing White House review ahead of its imminent release.

Environmentalists are defending EPA's authority to issue a Clean Water Act (CWA) rule requiring all concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to report key data to the agency in the face of industry claims that it violates an appellate ruling barring oversight of those CAFOs that do not discharge.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency's limited resources make it impossible for federal regulators to be able to broadly oversee hydraulic fracturing operations -- even if Congress were to restore EPA's legal authority to regulate the injection process once officials complete their pending study on whether the process impacts drinking water.

President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) is recommending that EPA develop “generic” radiation protection standards for nuclear waste repositories due to concerns that the site-specific standards the agency developed for the failed Yucca Mountain project were compromised by politics -- a suggestion that is drawing a mixed reaction from activists who have previously sued the agency claiming its site-specific standards are too weak.

Environmentalists are appealing a landmark lower court decision that found that challenges to EPA pesticide registrations for failing to consult on endangered species impacts must be brought under pesticide law, which provides the agency with more discretion and sets weaker standards, than the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that activists favor.

Industry officials are waging an 11th-hour bid to soften EPA's pending final air toxics rule for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plants, meeting with agency and White House officials to warn that unless EPA makes a host of changes the rule will be impossible for some plants to meet, causing them to shutter and creating hundreds of job losses.

EPA has approved regulations that allow for the use of smoke grenades and fog machines as part of military training exercises at an U.S. Army base in Colorado while aiming to reduce the exercises' air quality impacts, after Colorado reached an agreement with military officials on revisions to the state's air plan to incorporate the regulations.

Members of an EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel are divided over what advice to provide EPA on how to discount the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from biomass in Clean Air Act permits, raising doubts about how the agency will account for the emissions in pending permits.

As EPA launches a series of public meetings on its plan to integrate municipalities' wastewater and stormwater requirements, wastewater treatment industry officials say a number of issues are likely to emerge as flashpoints as the framework gets more specific, including the role of asset management, the use of green infrastructure to attain numeric pollution reductions and how flexible the agency will be with permittees.