Latest News from Inside EPA

Federal courts' stays of major EPA rules -- including an appellate stay of the Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule and the Supreme Court stay blocking the agency's climate rule for existing power plants -- are spurring debate over how the stays might impact EPA's success pursuing its agenda through the rest of the Obama administration.

Environmentalists are asking a federal district court to force EPA to craft a substantive response to their petition for the agency to impose strict federal Clean Water Act (CWA) nutrient standards on Mississippi River Basin states, arguing that its reasons for refusing are not "grounded in the statute" as an appeals court has required.

Massachusetts is planning to revisit contaminated sites that were once closed from further cleanup to assess whether trichloroethylene (TCE) poses an "imminent hazard," a rare move that was triggered by EPA's finding that the contaminant poses a risk of cardiac birth defects, and which may spur lawsuits over new cleanup costs.

Critics of EPA's landmark greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants, who filed their opening appellate briefs late Feb. 19, are emphasizing their claim that the rule is unlawful and must be vacated because it marks a “breathtaking expansion of the agency's authority” by requiring generation shifting “beyond the fence line” of regulated plants to non-regulated units.

Environmentalists are formally petitioning EPA under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to develop a federal regulation to control stormwater runoff from roads on forest lands, in response to the agency’s recent request for information on the extent to which existing federal, state and other programs are addressing runoff.

Environmentalists in a new legal filing are attacking what they say is EPA's “bypass” of a mandatory Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation with other agencies on risks of the pesticide cyantraniliprole, urging a federal appeals court to reverse and remand a lower court's dismissal of their suit that sought to force the consultation.

A pending Supreme Court ruling on whether regulators' findings that waters are jurisdictional under the Clean Water Act (CWA) are subject to pre-enforcement review might alter the scope of the water law more than EPA's contested CWA jurisdiction rule, one water attorney says, because it could clear the path for courts across the country to weigh in on the water law's scope.

Environmentalists are citing the Supreme Court's stay of EPA's power plant existing source performance standards (ESPS) as bolstering their push for the agency to issue first-time limits on the greenhouse gas (GHG) methane from existing sources in the oil and gas sector in case the ESPS is ultimately scrapped and its expected GHG cuts do not occur.

EPA is launching dual efforts to weigh the health risks associated with the use of tire crumb rubber in synthetic turf athletic fields, with the agency's Region 9 advising California on the state's pending review of the risks and EPA separately launching an inter-agency panel to "comprehensively examine" the safety of crumb rubber.

EPA is suggesting that the deadline for states to submit plans for its existing power plant greenhouse gas rule will slip in the wake of the high court stay, but the agency is also privately hinting to states that it may still be able to maintain a 2022 start date to the rule's compliance period should the stay eventually be lifted.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has on its own motion canceled oral argument slated for Feb. 23 in several states' challenge to EPA's Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule and stayed the litigation pending a decision from the 6th Circuit on whether it has authority to first hear consolidated challenges to the regulation.

EPA's just-announced enforcement priorities for fiscal years 2017 through 2019 include two new areas of focus covering accidental chemical releases and industrial water pollution and an expansion of its existing focus on hazardous air pollutants to include community-level air toxics, while continuing four of the agency's other five current priorities.

Environmentalists suing EPA over its revised air toxics maximum achievable control technology (MACT) rule for large “major” source industrial boilers say they intend to challenge the rule's limits on carbon monoxide (CO) as well as “work practice standards” that the agency is allowing in lieu of complying with some emissions limits.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has followed through on its threat to sue the agency for failing to craft a drinking water standard for the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate within a two-year Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) deadline, saying the Flint, MI, drinking water crisis shows the needs to curb toxics in water.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has announced that Karl Brooks, acting assistant administrator at the agency's Office of Administration and Resources Management (OARM), is leaving the agency to take a job in academia, and that the office's principal deputy will be promoted to serve as its new acting chief.

EPA's proposed fiscal year 2017 budget includes budget increases to speed the pace of its risk assessments of existing industrial chemicals and to further advance its nascent computational toxicology (CompTox) research efforts, while reducing funds to the original Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) due to the lower expected costs of computational methods.

EPA's fiscal year 2017 budget request includes a modest increase in funds to the agency's pesticides office for registration and registration review activities, with agency leaders seeking to increase the pace of registration review and predicting more complicated ecological registration analyses.

Several states are criticizing the ever-increasing costs of implementing and enforcing EPA waste, water, air and climate rules in the first wave of responses to a request from Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) Republicans for states to detail the "burdens" they face complying with the agency's regulatory agenda.

House Republicans are attacking EPA and the Interior Department's (DOI) reviews of an EPA cleanup team's accidental spill of contaminated wastewater from a former mine in Colorado last August, calling the departments' reports on the incident flawed while claiming that the agency crew caused the spill through clear misconduct.

Maryland is pursuing a lawsuit claiming coal ash disposal provisions in a Virginia-crafted Clean Water Act (CWA) permit for a power plant are too lax and at odds with EPA's coal ash Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) rule, an interstate dispute that poses an early test for how states will implement the contested federal rule.