Litigation

EPA is proposing rule changes that would limit the role of the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB), its administrative permit review body, likely complicating citizen groups’ efforts to challenge permits, while providing a new way for the agency’s general counsel and administrator to weigh in on legal disputes.

At least two judges on a federal appeals court panel appeared skeptical of environmentalists’ arguments that Interior Department officials violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by not adequately assessing climate change impacts of the nation’s first offshore drilling project in federal Arctic waters.

A federal appeals court is signaling that imminent oral argument in a precedent-setting suit challenging EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) listing of a vapor intrusion site will focus on the industry petitioner’s standing -- an issue that previously has been given little attention and one that raises doubts about the petitioner’s prospects.

A federal district court judge has stayed what had been a looming Nov. 6 deadline for EPA to issue a federal plan implementing Obama-era rules for landfills to cut the potent greenhouse gas methane, even though the judge rejected the agency’s request to amend the May order setting that deadline in the first place.