Blog

Today, the EPA announced national standards governing coal waste from coal-fired power plants, also known as coal ash. The rule does not treat coal ash as a hazardous material, but as household garbage. CPR President and University of Maryland law professor Rena Steinzor reacted to the classification: It’s bitterly disappointing that the electric utility industry, which earns profits hand over fist, has succeeded […]

The main tool available to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit the amount of pollution discharged into the nation’s waterways is a system of permits issued to polluters that restricts how much they may discharge. This permitting scheme, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), requires permittees to monitor their operations and report back […]

Contact: Erin Kesler                                     Email: ekesler@progressivereform.org Telephone: (202) 747-0698 X4 What: CPR and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law will host a luncheon and Q&A session with MD Attorney General-elect Brian Frosh on the state of environmental enforcement […]

Recent stories about “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay are a reminder that despite progress on some water pollution fronts, we still have a serious problem to address. One politically popular approach to addressing the problem is a market-based solution, in which hard-to-regulate “non-point” pollution sources (farming, run-off, other sources […]

At the Maryland Farm Bureau’s Annual Convention today, Maryland Governor-Elect Larry Hogan vowed to fight against the state’s proposed phosphorus management tool (PMT) regulations. CPR President and University of Maryland law professor Rena Steinzor reacted to Hogan’s comments, “It’s truly a shame that Governor-elect Hogan is indicating so early that he is willing to jeopardize the restoration […]

Without Better Phosphorus Management on Farms, Maryland Will Not Meet its Responsibility Under the Chesapeake Bay Pollution Diet A new interactive map from the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) and the Chesapeake Commons demonstrates that all but one industrial-scale chicken farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore reported having at least one field saturated with “excessive” soil phosphorus from […]

Over the next two weeks, CPR will publish a series of blog posts highlighting several key regulatory safeguards for protecting the integrity and health of U.S. water bodies against damaging pollution—rules that are currently under development by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and included in our recent Issue Alert, Barack Obama’s Path to Progress in […]

Today is the deadline for comments from the public on EPA’s proposed rule to limit carbon emission from existing power plants. CPR Member Scholar and University of North Carolina School of Law professor Victor Flatt submitted a comment on the rule. According to his comments: What I would like to focus on is suggesting that the […]

How much is it worth to save the life of a grandfather with lung disease or to keep an asthmatic child out of the hospital?  The ozone rule, which EPA proposes today after years of politically motivated delay and while staring down the barrel of a court order, responds to the urgent calls of a gold-standard […]