EPA, Outside Groups Brace For Divergent Outcomes Of Upcoming Election

EPA staff and outside groups are bracing for widely divergent outcomes from the Nov. 5 election, with officials in a potential second Trump administration poised to significantly overhaul and scale back the agency while a possible Harris administration would be expected to build on current programs. Oil and gas groups are also preparing their deregulatory agenda amid the electoral uncertainty, while the two main presidential campaigns are offering significant contrasts on most climate- and energy-related issues. At EPA, the agency’s...

OIG finds poor state data management hinders SRF oversight

EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is warning that states are not uniformly collecting and storing their clean and drinking water state revolving loan fund (CWSRF/DWSRF) subrecipient and contractor data in structured machine-readable formats, hindering the ability to conduct adequate oversight. In an Oct. 28 management implication report , OIG charges that some states’ data is “collected and stored in paper formats or nonmachine-readable formats” that significantly limits the ability to conduct data analytics for proactive oversight of the...

High Court Schedules Arguments In Key NEPA Case Over Indirect GHGs

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Dec. 10 in a key National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) case over whether agencies must assess the indirect effects of greenhouse gas emissions in their NEPA reviews even if they lack authority to regulate those emissions. The justices’ Oct. 18 scheduling order in the case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, et al. v. Eagle County, Colorado, et al. , came on the same day that Eagle County and environmentalists filed their reply briefs...

California Officials Appear To Push Back Offshore Wind Project Timetable

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) administration appears to be pushing back its projections for when the state’s first floating offshore wind energy projects will become operational -- with one advisor telling lawmakers it could take until at least 2035, well past the long-running goal of 2030 established by the administration and industry. “[T]he first 6 to 10 gigawatts [GW] of offshore wind generation will happen between 2030 and 2035, or so -- the ‘or so’ has an asterisk,” said Jana...

Climate Extra - 10/29/2024

Tue, 2024-10-29 16:12

Washington State Finds No Significant Harm From AFFF Disposal Options

Washington state has finalized a novel environmental impact study that finds that none of the five evaluated disposal options for aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) would have significant adverse impacts on communities or natural resources and three of the five would also not adversely affect Native American tribal areas or treaty rights. The five options that Washington’s Department of Ecology assessed in its final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) , released Oct. 15, are holding AFFF in place until advanced treatment...

Liable Parties Renew Bid To Toss Allocation Deal At Massive Superfund Site

Liable parties at the massive Diamond Alkali Superfund site are renewing their effort to toss EPA and the Justice Department’s proposed cost allocation for a small portion of what is expected to be the costliest of such cleanups ever, charging that the proposed division of responsibility among the parties is “arbitrary.” Nokia of America Corporation, intervenor-plaintiffs in the suit United States v. Alden Leeds, Inc., et al. , filed an Oct. 28 request asking a federal judge in New Jersey...

Biden EPA Picks IRA Clean Ports Projects To Cut GHGs, Other Emissions

The Biden EPA is announcing 55 projects across 27 states that will share nearly $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to curb greenhouse gases and other emissions at the nation’s ports, with officials touting the funds as enabling deployment of a range of zero-emission equipment that aids the climate and environmental justice (EJ) communities. The Oct. 29 announcement comes as President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit the Port of Baltimore to announce one of the grants, providing...

Biden EPA Picks IRA Clean Ports Projects To Cut GHGs, Other Emissions

The Biden EPA is announcing 55 projects across 27 states that will share nearly $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to curb greenhouse gases and other emissions at the nation’s ports, with officials touting the funds as enabling deployment of a range of zero-emission equipment that aids the climate and environmental justice (EJ) communities. The Oct. 29 announcement comes as President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit the Port of Baltimore to announce one of the grants, providing...

Maryland, South Carolina Urge 4th Circuit To Reject 3M’s Latest Arguments

Maryland and South Carolina are urging a federal appeals court to reject 3M’s latest argument to remove their PFAS liability suits to federal court, reemphasizing ahead of Oct. 30 oral argument that by not seeking recovery for contamination related to aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), 3M has no basis for its government contractor defense. The states’ rebuttal comes in response to a letter 3M wrote earlier this month to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit citing the 1st...

EPA Approval Of California SIP Expands ‘Contingency Measure’ Debate

EPA is proposing to accept a revision to a California state implementation plan (SIP) to attain the 2008 ozone standard in the San Joaquin Valley and halt a federal sanctions process against the state, expanding a debate over the agency’s controversial “contingency measure” (CM) policy for determining Clean Air Act SIP compliance. But the agency’s action, spelled out in an Oct. 25 Federal Register notice , is drawing criticism from environmentalists who say it allows the Golden State to...

Seeing Broad PFAS Exposures, USGS Seeks Bolstered Water Monitoring

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is seeking to bolster EPA and other monitoring of PFAS-contaminated drinking water after issuing a study that estimates that while 20 percent of the U.S. population -- as many as 95 million people -- may be drinking PFAS-contaminated groundwater, much of their water is not sampled. The study, published Oct. 24 in Science , relied on a new model to account for limited exposure data on those served by private wells as well as...

EPA settles suit seeking action on Bay/Delta salinity standards

EPA and environmentalists have reached a tentative deal to settle a lawsuit to compel the agency to take action on California water quality and salinity standards for a portion of the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (Bay/Delta), which will eventually enable the environmentalists to challenge the standards in court. But the parties are not disclosing the terms of the deal for several weeks until Biden administration officials sign off. “The Parties have reached a tentative settlement that resolves all...

OMB Clears PBT Rule Revisions Days Before Oct. 31 Enforcement Deadline

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed its review of EPA’s final TSCA rule reworking Trump-era limits on a pair of persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals, just days before the agency’s enforcement stay on one of the two is set to expire and a week after a federal appellate court resumed litigation on it. OMB approved the final Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule for the flame retardants decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE) and phenol, isopropylated phosphate...

Stakeholders Fear Confusion From Redone TSCA Dust-Lead Framework

Environmentalist and industry sources alike say provisions in EPA’s new TSCA hazard and clearance levels for lead dust in residential buildings could confuse stakeholders and the public because it reworks the relationship between those targets and when they trigger cleanup mandates, including as part of other government programs that incorporate the rule. The Oct. 24 rule tightens Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) dust-lead abatement requirements and lowers what the agency previously called its “hazard standard” for the metal to “...

County Advances California’s First CCS Project Amid EJ Group Opposition

California’s Kern County has approved a conditional use permit for a first-of-its-kind carbon capture and storage (CCS) project tied to natural gas production, despite ongoing opposition from environmental and environmental justice (EJ) groups in the state. “California just fell for the biggest corporate scam since filtered cigarettes,” charged Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Climate Law Institute, in an Oct. 21 statement. “Carbon capture is a dangerous, wildly expensive failure. Instead of propping up...

Critics Say EPA’s CCS Defense In Power Plant GHG Rule ‘Strains Credulity’

Critics are reiterating their suite of legal attacks on EPA’s greenhouse gas standards for power plants, arguing that EPA’s justification for the rule “strains credulity” by asserting that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is available at a reasonable cost to meet the strictest standards in the rule. In litigation over the rule in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, EPA argued in an Oct. 11 brief that the “totality of the record” clearly shows...

USDA awards rural electric co-ops additional IRA clean energy funds

The Agriculture Department (USDA) is announcing six rural electric cooperatives that will receive another $1 billion in grants and loans for carbon-reduction projects such as installing clean energy and retiring coal plants, while officials are also distributing $2.5 billion in previously announced funds. The department says the nearly $3 billion in total will lead to co-ops avoiding over 12 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. USDA on Oct. 25 announced it is awarding $2.5 billion in financing for the Tri-State...

EPA Seeks Input On New Ways To Cut Landfill Emissions, Harmonize Rules

EPA has quietly opened a non-regulatory docket seeking public input on new ways to reduce emissions at municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills as well as how it can streamline, harmonize and improve existing rules for the sector, a key step ahead of the planned mandatory update the agency is crafting for methane and other pollutants. As part of the new strategy, EPA Oct. 25 released a series of white papers on new and emerging emission reduction technologies at MSW landfills,...

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