Blog

Lois Alt is a 61-year-old grandmother who sued EPA in federal court arguing that her large chicken farming operation is exempt from Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting requirements. On October 23, the judge ruled in her favor in an alarming decision that could mean thousands of other large industrial farming operations do not need permits.  […]

Congratulations to our friends at Earthjustice and their clients for a tremendous victory in federal district court today. Judge Reggie Walton (a George W. Bush appointee) ordered the Obama Administration to provide a schedule for regulating coal ash within the next 60 days.   This epic battle now shifts back to the White House and Congress where […]

In the United States, the framework for safeguarding people and the environment against the dangers of toxic chemicals comprises three mutually reinforcing legal systems: federal regulation, state and federal civil justice systems, and state regulation. Each part of the framework however, has been substantially weakened — the civil justice systems by years of tort “reform,” and […]

Court rules that EPA must decide if new water quality standards are needed to protect the Gulf of Mexico A US District Court in Louisiana recently ruled, in Gulf Restoration Network v. Jackson, that EPA must decide whether it has to impose new water quality standards for nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River watershed. Although […]

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted six of the nine petitions challenging a DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the EPA’s rules regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. However, the Court granted review of only one aspect of the various petitions: whether the EPA’s use of vehicle emission standards to […]

In late September, the EPA proposed regulation of new power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act’s “New Source Performance Standards” (NSPS) provisions. Now an often little noticed follow-on provision—Section 111(d)— is suddenly in the spotlight. Section 111(d) requires regulation of existing sources that are in categories of polluters subject to NSPS regulation. President Obama, […]

As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem.  No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; […]

On September 17th, 2013, US EPA released a massive 331 page draft report distilling peer reviewed science regarding “connectivity” of various sorts of American water bodies with larger bodies of waters, such as rivers and lakes.   It also sent to the White House for review a draft proposed rule about how it and the Army […]

Last week, E&E News reported a breakdown in talks over EPA’s long- delayed stormwater rule. In 2009, in a settlement with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, EPA promised a new rule by November, 2012. That deadline has long since passed, and apparently EPA and environmental groups are at an impasse in their negotiations over a  new timeline. The […]