California regulators and a tax-sale property buyer are at odds over whether a federal appeals court should reconsider its precedent-setting ruling that blocked the property buyer from using the Superfund law's third-party defense as a shield against liability, which the buyer says will leave local taxing authorities "stuck" with contaminated properties.

EPA staff has begun drafting revisions to 2003 brownfields guidance that outlines when developers can qualify for limited liability protection under the Superfund law, responding to recommendations from Administrator Scott Pruitt's Superfund Task Force and longstanding calls from industry for greater clarity in the wake of controversial legal rulings.

Even as EPA moves to assess and possibly regulate several individual perfluorinated chemicals, the agency's top policy official on the issue is acknowledging that given the thousands of chemicals in the class, they will eventually have to be considered in groups rather than individually, an approach that the agency has previously struggled to advance.

EPA has sent the final version of its first revisions to the 2014 coal ash disposal rule for White House review, teeing up a court challenge if the agency enacts its proposals to add a host of flexibilities that environmentalists have said are "fatally flawed" and lack legal justification under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

Top EPA officials have decided to strengthen the internal agency review of Administrator Scott Pruitt's controversial proposed rule requiring the use of publicly available research to justify rules just as the agency's Science Advisory Board (SAB) voted unanimously to review the measure amid broad criticisms.

Key Republican lawmakers and other Trump administration allies are heightening their concerns about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's ethics scandals, with many influential conservatives publicly calling for President Donald Trump to fire Pruitt or at least floating a scenario in which he leaves the agency.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is urging lawmakers to bolster chemical information sharing between facilities and communities even as EPA is proposing to scrap some of the provisions of the Obama-era final rule updating its facility accident prevention program that would bolster such sharing of facility data.

The Senate Appropriations Committee interior panel that oversees EPA's funding has approved fiscal year 2019 legislation that would retain the agency's existing $8.058 billion and exclude any new controversial riders affecting EPA policies, setting up a clash with the House's bill that would cut funding and includes several contested riders.

EPA is further narrowing its approach for assessing the risks of the first 10 "existing" chemicals it is reviewing for possible regulation under the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), issuing problem formulation documents that preclude consideration of risks that other agency programs are already addressing.

EPA and other agencies are asking the IRS to ease -- or drop -- requirements in a proposed guidance on reporting the estimated value of environmental and other enforcement settlements, data the IRS is expected to use to ensure compliance with strict new deduction provisions contained in the tax law President Donald Trump signed late last year.