Daily News

Environmentalists say the Trump administration’s just-announced monthslong delay of its self-imposed deadline for finalizing a rollback of an Obama-era rule tightening facility safety Risk Management Plan (RMP) requirements may suggest the plan is “dead in the water” as it signals ongoing legal doubts about undoing the changes.

EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) are poised to end grant funding they have jointly provided for the past two decades to more than a dozen children's health research centers though officials say they will provide some funds for children's health issues though it is likely to be significantly less, and more narrowly focused, than in the past.

EPA is appealing a federal district judge’s ruling that limits its discretion on Clean Water Act (CWA) stormwater permits and could force an expansion of stormwater discharge permits, teeing up a first-time appellate case on the issue even after the agency declined to appeal a similar adverse ruling from another district court last year.

California lawmakers are advancing a restructuring and fee reform budget proposal for the state’s embattled Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), while limiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) proposed General Fund backfill budget for the agency to only the coming fiscal year instead of the next three.

In a rare rejection of a chairman’s proposal, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is advancing new rules allowing for more biomethane and potentially hydrogen to be injected into the state’s natural gas pipeline system as one strategy to lower the state’s energy carbon footprint.

House Democrats have rejected Republican attempts to fight funding increases for EPA enforcement or restore riders limiting EPA's authority, a trend that appears likely to repeat itself during subsequent floor action on the agency's fiscal year 2020 spending bill, which is expected in June at the earliest.

EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) is seeking to investigate the agency’s valuation of “co-benefits” in its Clean Air Act rules and is planning a new report on the topic, just as EPA overhauls its approach to cost-benefit analysis for rules to downplay its prior emphasis on co-benefit pollution reductions to help justify the cost of regulations.

The IRS is soliciting feedback on how it should implement an expanded tax credit for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and formally floating the possibility of allowing companies to use an alternative to EPA rules to certify long-term storage, a move that highlights the crucial issue of how to define permanent sequestration.