The social commentator Will Rogers famously said that a "farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer." Those words certainly ring true when one reads EPA's Farm, Ranch, and Rural Communities Advisory...more
Lara Beaven, the excellent reporter on all things having to do with the Clean Water Act at Inside EPA, shares what we might expect from EPA and the Supreme Court of the United States in the year just beginning as the longest...more
This morning we have a seventy five page decision by a Federal District Court Judge in New York dismissing a lawsuit by a water supplier against the nation's most well-known manufacturer of PFAS to recover the costs of...more
A Colorado-based NGO has dropped its 9th Circuit lawsuit challenging EPA's Multi-Sector General Permit for stormwater discharges associated with industrial facilities.
On one hand, this is a victory for EPA which...more
Last week another NGO filed suit against another operator of a wastewater treatment facility, this one in the mountains of Montana, complaining of "excess" nitrogen in the treated effluent from the wastewater treatment...more
All the pressure Congress is all of a sudden exerting on the Executive Branch of our Federal Government when it comes to PFAS brings to mind a great line by one of the great comics of my youth. Steve Martin exclaimed "you...more
The Sacketts of Idaho want the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene on their behalf for a second time. Now, just weeks before the ten year anniversary of the Sackett's first successful trip to the Supreme Court,...more
The Dean of Environmental Law bloggers, Seth Jaffe, does me the honor of a thoughtful response to my concern about whether EPA's and the Army Corps of Engineers' proposed definition of Waters of the United States, and...more
EPA has published its most recent proposed definition of "Waters of the United States" with an eye toward finalizing that definition next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.
Before I get to the...more
This week the Massachusetts Attorney General joined the Department of Justice in asking the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn what has been the law in the First Circuit for thirty years -- one can't bring a citizen...more
Bloomberg Environment reports the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will set a drinking water limit for two of the thousands of "forever chemicals" known as PFAS joining several other states that have already set limits of their...more
The monumental infrastructure bill that President Biden signed yesterday will send $10 billion to the States to pass on to drinking water suppliers to test for the "forever chemicals" known collectively as PFAS and then...more
EPA has released its risk assessment for GenX, one of the hundreds of "forever chemicals" known collectively as PFAS that are ubiquitous in our environment owing to decades of use in everything from fire suppressants to pizza...more
Yesterday EPA announced a new layer to EPA's PFAS roadmap unveiled only last week. Now four of the hundreds of chemicals collectively known as PFAS will eventually be regulated as hazardous waste under RCRA in response to a...more
This week the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided to rehear, en banc, the argument of a Massachusetts-based NGO that a 2014 Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Administrative Consent Order did not preempt...more
Traveling the long and winding road to Hana in Maui is one of the most beautiful experiences one can have in the United States. I'm not sure anyone would say the same thing about the long and winding litigation road taken to...more
EPA has released its ambitious and wide-ranging plan for addressing the ubiquitous "forever" chemicals known collectively as PFAS. The PFAS Road Map, developed by an EPA task force co-chaired by New England's own Acting...more
In What About Bob, a movie worth seeing only if you, like me, think every film including Bill Murray is worth seeing, the fictional guru Dr. Leo Marvin wrote a book called "Baby Steps." The theme of "Baby Steps" is that no...more
Lara Beaven, of Inside EPA, reports this afternoon that EPA has shared with the White House Office of Management and Budget what EPA management hopes will be a "durable" definition of "waters of the United States." Such a...more
The County of Maui had another day in court this week, this time pleading with Federal District Judge Mollway to reconsider her renewed decision that the discharge of treated effluent from the Maui waste water treatment...more
Just a few years ago, before the Trump Administration EPA revoked and replaced the Obama Administration EPA's regulations determining the reach of the Clean Water Act, the Obama Administration EPA regulations were the law in...more
Friday, a Federal District Court Judge in California joined most other Federal District Court Judges in concluding that EPA's Clean Water Act regulations should not be vacated while EPA considers how it might revise them. ...more
EPA's post-Maui statement on the reach of the Federal Clean Water Act has joined other regulations and guidance applying the Clean Water Act from the Obama and Trump Administrations on the ash heap of history.
It is...more
In June, EPA said it intended its current regulations determining the reach of the Clean Water Act to remain in place while it developed new regulations doing the same thing differently. It has repeated that position in...more
News this morning that an Arizona Federal District Court Judge has done what many of us expected would happen eventually -- purport to strike down the Trump Administration's regulation establishing the reach of the Federal...more