EPA has told its financial advisors to "close out" their project aimed at identifying financing options to encourage the replacement of boilers with energy-efficient technology such as combined heat and power (CHP) as a way to comply with the agency's strict air toxics rule for boilers, after the advisors failed to identify such options.

The novel industry challenge to EPA's efforts to ban the use of some d-Con rodenticides, one of the first such efforts under federal pesticide law, is targeting the agency's determination that its ban of the products extends to the sale of existing stocks, according to recently filed administrative and judicial briefs.

A federal district court has dismissed environmentalists' suit challenging a decades-old EPA water rule that bars states from adding conditions to their certifications of federal water discharge permits after the permits have been issued, saying the case will not be ripe for review until a state seeks to amend a certification in defiance of the rule.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has provisionally selected panelists to review EPA's pending white paper on the controversial topic of some chemicals' so-called non-monotonic dose-response curves (NMDRC), an issue that could lead to changes in how EPA and other agencies assess some chemicals' endocrine disrupting risks.

EPA is considering changes to its requirements for states to report Clean Air Act violations to the agency that states say has led to major expansion of reporting mandates amid dwindling resources, with a key organization representing state and local air officials urging EPA to make minimizing reporting burdens a priority for fiscal year 2014.

A proposed legislative amendment to bar EPA from finalizing its controversial guidance on the reach of the Clean Water Act (CWA) won majority support in the Senate, including from eight Democrats, though it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary for passage -- a signal that the guide still faces opposition in Congress as EPA weighs whether to issue it prior to completing a related rule.

State hazardous waste officials are urging EPA to provide a new conditional approach to managing post-manufacturing pharmaceutical waste that would bypass traditional hazardous waste regulations but still prevent a much wider array of drugs from entering the environment through current agency rules.

States and industry groups are urging EPA to scrap a proposed rule that would force 36 states to stop allowing Clean Air Act compliance exemptions for industrial facilities' excess emissions during startup, shutdown and malfunction (SSM) events, with critics saying the plan is flawed, technically infeasible and would impose massive costs.

A federal court appears to have set a high bar for environmentalists to force regulators to revise discharge permits within the five-year statutory review period, rejecting a push to set a deadline for EPA to revise two permits after finding that its 17-year delay did not meet the bar of being an "extraordinary situation" that justifies issuance of an order.

EPA's plan for implementing budget sequestration cuts through the remainder of fiscal year 2013 disproportionally targets funding cuts on enforcement of Superfund cleanups at federal facilities -- even as environmentalists and House Democrats are raising concerns about agencies' ability to clean up contaminated former nuclear sites due to the cuts.

Supporters of Senate legislation to reauthorize and revise the brownfields program are focusing on "behind-the-scenes" efforts to gain pairs of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors, highlighting proposed program changes that would make it easier for rural communities to receive technical assistance grants.

New scientific findings based on human data are suggesting that EPA's interim exposure limits for widespread perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in drinking water are inadequate to protect human health and that the agency should significantly strengthen its values.

Industry groups and state officials are reiterating calls for the use of a broader, watershed-based approach that considers multiple contamination sources when regulators craft sediment cleanup plans, an approach that EPA endorses, though critics say the agency does not always fully adopt it at all waste sites.

Environmentalists say their loss in a lawsuit challenging EPA's "affirmative" defense for Clean Air Act permit holders to use for violations of certain emissions limits means the agency has won the legal fight over the policy, and are now shifting their focus to enforcing permits where emissions might exceed those covered by the defense.

The Senate appears poised to adopt controversial measures streamlining environmental review requirements for water resource projects after the bill's managers agreed to address some lawmakers' concerns, such as by capping penalties agencies would face for missing review deadlines, but declined to address concerns from environmentalists and the Obama administration that the measures undercut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Environmentalists have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking EPA documents related to the agency's rejection of their petition for EPA to develop a Clean Air Act greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for coal mines, with environmentalists hinting the documents could “empower” a potential lawsuit challenging EPA's decision.

Construction and paper industry groups are submitting data to EPA in an effort to convince the agency to expand categorical exemptions from a rule defining non-hazardous secondary materials (NHSM) that are solid waste, which would allow two more types of material to be classified as fuel subject to the agency's boiler air toxics rule rather than a more-stringent emissions limit for incinerators which covers facilities that burn materials listed in the NHSM rule.

EPA's recent issuance of a new vessel discharge permit has allowed environmentalists to renew their long-stalled challenge to a decades-old agency Clean Water Act (CWA) regulation barring federal courts from amending conditions that states attach to federal permits to ensure they comply with state water quality requirements.

EPA has tasked the independent research group Health Effects Institute (HEI) with reviewing epidemiological data linking diesel exhaust exposure to cancer and is awaiting a final HEI report to guide the agency's "next steps" on diesel science, including a long-pending decision on whether to revise its 10-year-old diesel exhaust risk study.

EPA in a new draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment is weakening its non-cancer risk estimates for methanol from what the agency proposed in a 2011 draft, following concerns from many peer reviewers who considered the earlier draft estimates overly stringent.