Trump Win Spurs California Officials To Again Boost Climate Policy Defenses

Just as they did after Donald Trump’s first presidential election victory in 2016, California officials are again ramping up legal and other defenses of their climate and environmental rules in the wake of Trump’s win in the Nov. 5 election, and they could pursue additional side deals with industry if certain federal rules are scaled back. “I expect California to vigorously defend its [Clean Air Act regulatory] waiver programs, both in court and by seeking corporate commitments of the type...

Election Boosts GOP Sway On Capitol Hill, Amid IRA Rollback Questions

The Republican takeover of the Senate after the Nov. 5 election will significantly strengthen the party’s hand on Capitol Hill, even as questions remain about the extent of the GOP’s attacks on clean energy measures in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and how much leverage Democrats will have to slow the incoming Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. Many important questions -- including the substance and process of possible legislation on energy project permit streamlining -- could also depend on control of...

Environmentalists Say EPA Must Weigh Cumulative Risk In TSCA Prioritization

Environmentalists are pushing EPA’s toxics office to consider cumulative risks from multiple overlapping chemical exposures as they weigh their next round of targets for TSCA’s prioritization process, along with an array of other equity issues, with several pushing the agency to select a block of plastic-related substances for review. A host of environmental groups filed comments last week on the list of 27 chemicals that EPA floated in September as candidates for prioritization under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA),...

Quote-Unquote: House Republicans press EPA on WOTUS narrowing

What they’re saying. House Republicans say administration is disregarding Sackett WOTUS narrowing : “This administration is not adhering to Sackett, attempting to maintain broad federal overreach, slow-walking implementation, failing to provide adequate direction to regulated communities, and delaying projects which require certainty under a [Clean Water Act] permitting regime. In Sackett, the Supreme Court provided needed clarity on the definition of a WOTUS, [Waters of the U.S.], reinforcing property owners’ rights, protecting the separation of powers by limiting the authority...

Election Boosts GOP Sway On Capitol Hill, Amid IRA Rollback Questions

The Republican takeover of the Senate after the Nov. 5 election will significantly strengthen the party’s hand on Capitol Hill, even as questions remain about the extent of the GOP’s attacks on clean energy measures in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and how much leverage Democrats will have to slow the incoming Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. Many important questions -- including the substance and process of possible legislation on energy project permit streamlining -- could also depend on control of...

Stakeholders Question EPA’s Fairness Over Thermal Treatment For PFAS

Waste combustion companies and former EPA staff are faulting EPA over how it ranks thermal treatment among other destruction and disposal technologies for PFAS, with some questioning the reliability of other methods EPA names as likely to result in lower PFAS releases -- although environmentalists argue thermal methods such as incinerators pose major safety concerns. In comments on EPA’s April 2024 updated interim guidance for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) disposal and destruction, some waste and manufacturing industry proponents note...

Trump Poised To Rewrite TSCA Agenda In Second Term

President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House promises to reshape how EPA implements the reformed TSCA, reviving policy approaches from his first term that the Biden administration scrapped and reworking or dropping several high-profile rules -- moves that would short-circuit the agency’s current toxics agenda. EPA’s landmark Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rules governing use of chrysotile asbestos and methylene chloride, as well as its “framework” for future risk evaluations of existing chemicals, are all facing heavy opposition...

ACC Warns Against ‘Midnight’ Formaldehyde Review Despite Settlement

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is warning EPA not to take “midnight actions on formaldehyde” even as the agency prepares to finalize a TSCA settlement that would commit it to competing the review and several others by December, on the eve of a presidential transition widely expected to reverse many of the Biden administration’s toxics policies. ACC wrote a Nov. 4 letter to EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff expressing its “alarm” over an Oct. 23 meeting with “senior” officials at...

Trump Return May Doom EPA Plans For Tougher Gas-Plant Air Limits

Former President Donald Trump’s election victory has thrown into jeopardy EPA’s plan for tougher greenhouse gas and conventional air emissions limits for gas-fired power plants, with a legal deadline fast approaching for proposal of tougher nitrogen oxides (NOx) limits that will likely never be finalized by the incoming administration. Under a consent decree agreement with environmentalists, EPA must issue a proposed review of its new source performance standards (NSPS) for new gas-fired power plants by an extended deadline of Nov...

Trump Victory To Loom Over COP29, As Biden Negotiators Press Forward

Amid widespread expectations that President-elect Donald Trump will again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement once he re-takes office in January, Biden officials are entering next week’s annual United Nations climate talks as a lame duck with diminished leverage to shape any outcomes. “I imagine that the atmosphere at [the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29)] of course will be affected,” given Trump’s prior approach to U.N. climate efforts, says Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy...

Judge Denies Industry Quick Victory In California GHG Disclosure Lawsuit

A federal judge is denying industry’s motion for summary judgment in its constitutional facial challenge to California’s two 2023 laws requiring large companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks, ruling that further proceedings are necessary to determine if the laws violate the First Amendment. “[T]he Court finds that there are genuine disputes of material fact that preclude it from granting summary judgment at this stage,” potentially paving the way for the state to pursue discovery, according...

Inside EPA - 11/08/2024

Wed, 2024-11-06 14:10

Trump Victory Slated To Spur Major Upheaval For Environmental Policy

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, the direction of federal environmental policy faces a major upheaval, as he has pledged to sharply roll back a host of Biden-era climate and other regulations and would likely scale back EPA’s work in a number of areas. One former EPA official says that a Trump victory would usher in an agenda along the lines of the first Trump administration, but “on steroids.” At press time, Trump was projected...

EPA poised to publish Good Neighbor stay

EPA is slated to publish its full stay of the Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) interstate ozone rule in the Federal Register Nov. 6, making the measure effective and starting a 60-day window for lawsuits against the interim final rule. The rule, signed by Administrator Michael Regan Oct. 29, halts the GNP in all 23 covered states, for all industries involved including the power sector. It marks a key administrative step in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June ruling in...

Industry Urges Court To Vacate PFAS CERCLA Rule, Citing Multiple Flaws

Industry groups are asking a federal appeals court to vacate EPA’s landmark rule designating two PFAS as Superfund “hazardous substances,” arguing in their opening brief that the agency misinterpreted the law’s threshold bar that requires a showing of “substantial danger” for its first-time listings and provided a “fundamentally flawed” cost analysis. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and six other groups representing manufacturing and waste/recycling sectors filed their opening brief Nov. 4 in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of...

Industry Urges Court To Vacate PFAS CERCLA Rule, Citing Multiple Flaws

Industry groups are asking a federal appeals court to vacate EPA’s landmark rule designating two PFAS as Superfund “hazardous substances,” arguing in their opening brief that the agency misinterpreted the law’s threshold bar that requires a showing of “substantial danger” for its first-time listings and provided a “fundamentally flawed” cost analysis. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and six other groups representing manufacturing and waste/recycling sectors filed their opening brief Nov. 4 in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of...

CSB Again Urges EPA To Review Hydrogen Fluoride Under Toxics Law

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is renewing its calls for EPA to target hydrogen fluoride (HF) -- a highly toxic catalyst involved in several releases or near-misses in industrial accidents in recent years -- as part of the next block of five chemicals the agency puts through TSCA prioritization. Comments closed Oct. 31 on a list of 27 candidates that EPA could put through the Toxic Substances Control Act’s (TSCA) prioritization process -- including HF, which CSB...

CBD Urges Appeals Court To Affirm Vacatur Of Florida 404 Program

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) is urging a federal appeals court to affirm a lower court ruling that vacated EPA’s Trump-era approval of Florida’s Clean Water Act (CWA) 404 permitting program, in a case that marks an important legal test as other states weigh plans to seek similar authority over dredge-and-fill permits. CBD filed a Nov. 1 appellee and cross-appellant brief in the suit CBD, et al., v. EPA, et al. , in the U.S. Court of Appeals for...

Texas Urges 5th Circuit To Uphold Vacatur Of DOT Highway GHG Measure

Texas is outlining its pitch for why the 5th Circuit should affirm a lower court ruling vacating the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) greenhouse gas performance measure for highway projects, claiming the lower court properly blocked a rule that exceeds DOT’s authority or is otherwise arbitrary. The arguments surface in a Nov. 1 brief in State of Texas v. DOT , one of two pending appeals by the federal government to district court rulings that either overturn the DOT regulation or...

FERC Grapples With Connecting Power-Hungry Data Centers To Grid

Federal energy regulators are beginning to grapple with how to deliver electricity to power-hungry data centers that are being deployed to serve artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced computing applications, as officials struggle to balance the cost, reliability and emissions implications of the expected wave of projects. Among the options being explored are proposals to co-locate such facilities with large generators such as nuclear plants, as the technology sector is under pressure to ensure that AI expansion does not cause...

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