Environmentalists plan to pressure EPA to revise and tighten its coal ash rule in line with a federal appeals court mandate issued Oct. 15 that formally vacates portions of the Obama-era regulation, in lieu of pursuing waste law enforcement actions against utilities that they claim are now violating the law as a result of the mandate.
EPA Region 9 is criticizing 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 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.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is letting stand a panel decision that says leaking coal ash disposal sites are not “point sources” subject to Clean Water Act (CWA) liability, rejecting environmentalists' claim that the precedential ruling undercuts limits on other facilities and bolstering industry in many pending district-level CWA suits.
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 agency is hailing the removal of 18 full sites and four partial sites from the National Priorities List, a significant boost over the three deletions in fiscal year 2016.
EPA staff can use the web-based tool to notify senior management when concerns they raise to supervisors about significant environmental risks go unaddressed.
The pending Supreme Court petition over environmental limits on a border wall, along with a just-argued case on sex offender registries, could give the justices an opportunity to limit EPA's rulemaking discretion by strengthening a little-used doctrine that bars Congress from giving the executive branch “unbounded” discretion to regulate.
Senate environment committee Republicans are suggesting they will try in the next Congress to move legislation that largely adopts a controversial EPA proposal to bar the agency in rulemaking from relying on scientific data that is not publicly available, with a GOP staffer saying lawmakers' preference is to enact such policies through statute.
Both the House and Senate have approved legislation requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to coordinate with EPA to eliminate a requirement for airports to use PFAS-containing firefighting foam.
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.
