A new EPA Environmental Appeals Board case contesting an agency-issued underground injection control (UIC) permit aims to force the agency to give greater weight to environmental justice (EJ) concerns and drinking water impacts when it considers Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) permits for oil extraction, waste disposal and other uses.
A prominent deregulatory advocate says the Trump administration's plan to roll back vehicle greenhouse gas limits and undo California's Clean Air Act power to set stricter standards undermines its professed support for “cooperative federalism,” and warns that scrapping the state's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales mandate is legally “vulnerable.”
Opponents of EPA's plan to repeal the Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule are attacking the agency's “supplemental” proposal that aims to further justify the effort, arguing that there are major flaws in the factual and legal basis for the repeal and warning that undoing the existing policy will create regulatory uncertainty.
EPA is fighting Sierra Club's call for a federal district court to set a Dec. 31 deadline for the agency to complete an overdue study mandated by law on the renewable fuel standard's (RFS) environmental impacts, instead asking the court for more than a year to complete it and to defer a deadline for “follow-up” action to mitigate any adverse impacts.
Birmingham's mayor calls for a waste site in the city to be added to the Superfund list after a former PRP official and his lawyer engaged in a “a massive public misinformation campaign and bribery” to block the listing.
The Trump administration is urging a federal district court to uphold its decision that environmentalists lacked standing for their suit aiming to block Clean Water Act (CWA) grant funds for Washington state, arguing that the plaintiffs provided “no evidence” to support their standing and have failed to justify reconsidering the ruling.
Opponents of the pesticide chlorpyrifos concerned about its human health harms are eyeing preemptive steps to block use of the substance including calling on California to suspend it and rallying support for legislation to impose a national ban, as they expect EPA to appeal a recent appellate ruling that requires it to prohibit the substance.
EPA says there was no need to consider how its delay of the 2015 jurisdiction rule would affect the environment, because the delay was not a decision on how to apply the water law in the “long term.”
Critics of the world's most commonly used herbicide are hailing a court ruling that finds the substance causes cancer, even as EPA suggests it is unlikely to cause cancer.
