Litigation

EPA's proposed rollback of the Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction standard limits the law's reach of tributaries and wetlands to features that contribute flow to navigable waterways in “a typical year,” a new model that appears to create a much narrower jurisdiction test than the existing “significant nexus” standard.

Appellate judges at Dec. 10 oral argument appeared to doubt the merits of a Sierra Club lawsuit that aims to force EPA to increase opportunities for public input on states' air quality monitoring plans, questioning the group's claim that a recent agency emissions monitoring policy revision weakened public input rather than strengthening it.

Conservatives usually allied with the Trump administration are considering filing a data quality petition to force officials to withdraw or correct their recently released National Climate Assessment (NCA), charging it is flawed, undercuts the president's pledges to reexamine climate science and will drive suits to force regulatory action.

EPA's final rule to “close-out” the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program offers a broad defense of the agency's policy on reducing interstate air pollution that could help it defend the close-out rule from legal attacks, and that it might also use in ongoing suits aiming to force stricter EPA rules on the pollution.