A federal district court has denied the Navy's attempt to recover cleanup costs from a defense contractor at a naval weapons facility, dismissing on res judicata grounds but also clarifying that a cleanup record of decision (ROD) is not necessarily the trigger for statute of limitations' starting point in cost recoveries.

Environmentalists have filed a broad lawsuit challenging EPA's oversight of state coal ash disposal programs that claims the agency is failing to ensure public participation in the state permitting process, and seeking to overturn EPA's approval of Oklahoma's ash program after an appellate court said the rule on which it was based is unlawfully lenient.

The chemical industry is calling for policymakers to ease EPA's rules to address the growing problem of ocean plastics, including scaling back hazardous waste permitting requirements for thermochemical and gasification processes that convert plastics into fuels and chemicals and to grant renewable fuel credits to fuels derived from plastic waste.

Charging that EPA is "not doing nearly enough," environmentalists are urging the Senate to require the Trump administration to quickly take a series of steps to address water contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), citing a new study that suggests levels at many military bases exceed a federal health agency's draft risk values.

A federal health agency is being asked to expand the reach of its pending study assessing exposure of residents on or near military bases to per- or polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in various water sources so that it also accounts for exposures to first responders and provides analysis of individual-level data, rather than summary statistics.

EPA Region 9 is raising new criticisms over the Navy's management of re-sampling and cleanup work at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, CA, saying the Navy fails in a recent review of the high-profile cleanup to be upfront about the falsified radiological data sampling that a cleanup contractor was found to have done throughout the site.

EPA's enforcement and acting waste office chiefs have issued guidance to regional staff reinforcing the importance of adhering to established timelines for disputes with federal facilities over cleanups, responding to Superfund reforms that EPA leadership adopted last year to speed cleanups and ensure disputes between federal parties do not slow work.

The head of a major EPA staff union is attacking President Donald Trump's bid to freeze pay levels for federal employees as a fresh blow to morale for an agency whose staff is already opposed to its current deregulatory agenda, saying it will exacerbate an employee "exodus" that started when EPA pursued major regulatory rollbacks.

EPA has appointed David Dunlap, a chemical engineer with Koch Industries, as the deputy chief of its research office, a move that will provide the office with political leadership at the deputy level, which does not require Senate confirmation, while allowing the agency to avoid another bruising battle over an industry nominee for the office.

Citing floodwaters from Hurricane Florence that threatened industrial facilities in the Carolinas, the City of Houston, House Democrats, and former EPA staff are strongly opposing the Trump administration's rollback of an Obama-era rule strengthening EPA's facility accident prevention program, arguing it would make facilities more vulnerable to flooding.