Latest News from Inside EPA

A peat mining company is calling on the Supreme Court to allow challenges to regulators' findings that waters are subject to the Clean Water Act (CWA), arguing that any other approach would violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), while also urging the justices to revise their long-standing test for when to allow APA suits.

EPA is asking Colorado's governor to concur on a proposal to list a swath of 48 mines and related areas -- including the much-watched Gold King Mine -- as a single Superfund site on the National Priorities List (NPL), with the agency gaining backing for the listing from local communities following negotiations in which EPA conceded to altering the Superfund site boundaries and name.

A coalition of 20 states is urging the Supreme Court to stay implementation of EPA's utility air toxics rule, citing the high court's recent decision to halt the agency's greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for existing power plants and highlighting concerns about federal appellate rulings that remand litigated rules to EPA but leave them in place during remand.

A bipartisan group of senators has reached a compromise on providing financial aid to Flint, MI, that includes a boost to the drinking water state revolving fund (DWSRF) and funding for a nascent financing mechanism by reprogramming funds from a little-used auto loan program.

With most attention focused on litigating EPA's existing power plant greenhouse gas rule, agency opponents are urging a federal appellate court to set a lengthy briefing schedule in a separate suit over the related new source rule, which would punt oral arguments in the case until next year -- well after briefing in the existing source rule is completed.

EPA in response to queries from Senate Republicans is offering a broad defense of its actions before and after an agency cleanup team spilled 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater at a former mine in Colorado last year, though officials are sidestepping queries over how they will address a host of pending tort claims related to the spill.

EPA's latest agenda for its influential Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessments includes an increasing number of "background" chemicals or metals that are produced by industrial processes or pollution but also exist naturally in the environment or in the human body, increasing the agency's focus on reviewing such substances.

Environmentalists are urging EPA to step up enforcement of its landmark multi-state Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load (TMDL) water cleanup plan, warning that unless the agency forces states to tighten their controls on pollution from agriculture operations and stormwater runoff they are likely to miss the plan's 2017 goals.

EPA is at odds with some state and industry critics of its Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule over whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit's decision that it has power to hear challenges to the regulation means other appellate and district court cases should end, or whether, as the critics claim, the other cases should proceed.

EPA has released its detailed defense of its Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule publicity campaign that rejects a Government Accountability Office (GAO) legal opinion saying the campaign violated appropriations law, while House Republican lawmakers are ramping up criticism of the campaign in a series of questions to the White House.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis of current legislative options to address water infrastructure financing needs concludes that there is no single best method to fully address billions of dollars in water infrastructure needs, nor is there consensus supporting a preferred policy option.

EPA is extending from March 2 to Oct. 3 the deadline for oil and gas drilling sites on tribal land that are classed as “true minor sources” of air pollution to comply with EPA's Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permit rule for the sites, pending release of an upcoming federal plan that would make individual NSR permits unnecessary.

A federal district court judge overseeing coal industry firms' suit seeking a first-time broad review of EPA air and climate rules' impacts on jobs is ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to craft a new summary judgment motion on the agency's behalf after the end of discovery in the suit -- the mandated disclosure of information relevant to the case.

State and industry opponents are offering a host of “procedural” arguments that they hope will help kill EPA's greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants in the event the rule overcomes their “core” legal claims, including charges that the final rule violates administrative law because it is “radically” different than the proposed rule and that the agency has not shown its targets are “achievable.”

EPA is facing a push to immediately disclose and address elevated levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in affected communities across the country, following the agency's recent decision to tighten its unenforceable health advisory level that EPA is using for drinking water contaminated with PFOA in a New York community.

Environmentalists are criticizing electronics manufacturers for not doing more to support responsible recycling of their products after Best Buy, the leading industry electronics recycler, announced changes to its recycling program that advocates say will weaken it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit's divided decision to hear consolidated suits over EPA's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule creates fresh legal confusion, as it fails to resolve whether the myriad federal district court cases over the rule will continue and the majority's reasoning could be vulnerable to a rehearing request.

EPA's top water official in a letter to Congress is touting the agency's progress in remediating lead contamination in the Flint, MI, drinking water system while also pledging to continue work revising national rules to prevent similar crises in the future, but Republicans are claiming EPA's efforts fall short of its duties under federal drinking water law.

EPA says that officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and in Flint, MI, are not adequately complying with the agency’s Jan. 21 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) emergency order requiring the city to swiftly improve its drinking water system in response to the lead contamination crisis.

EPA and Canadian environment regulators are pledging to reduce phosphorus releases into parts of Lake Erie by 40 percent of 2008 levels in order to control the hypoxic “dead zones” that have fed past harmful algal blooms in the lake, such as the one that left Toledo, OH, residents without potable water in 2014.