EPA Seeks Deference From Federal Court On 'Indefensible' Ozone NAAQS

EPA is defending its 2008 ozone ambient air standard from multiple legal attacks by arguing federal courts should defer to the agency on making policy judgments on scientific evidence, a standard Administrator Lisa Jackson has said is not scientifically or legally defensible. In a new legal brief filed July 2 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in consolidated litigation over the ozone standard, EPA does not attempt to reconcile its defense of the Bush-era...

Appeals Court Grants New Utility Developers' Bid To Expedite MACT Suit

A federal appeals court has granted new coal plant developers' request to sever and expedite their suit over EPA's utility maximum achievable control technology (MACT) air toxics rule from other lawsuits over the rule, ensuring swift court consideration of their claim that their projects could stall because of a "regulatory dilemma" of facing requirements under both the final air toxics rule and EPA's proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) rule for new power plants. The decision is a loss for the agency...

Industry Eyes RFS Fix To Expand Biofuel Use For Boiler MACT Compliance

Industry is looking to a pending EPA rule revising the renewable fuel standard (RFS) to include additional types of fuels commonly used in larger facilities for heat as a way to expand the market for advanced biofuel use in boilers, in turn easing compliance with EPA's boiler air toxics rule by using the lower-emitting biofuel heating oil. The change could help to address a major concern from critics of EPA's boiler rule -- that it will impose massive costs to...

Industry Warns EPA Data Prove Coal Boilers Cannot Meet Revised MACT

A key industry group says data prepared for EPA by a consulting firm show the vast majority of coal-fired industrial boilers will be unable to meet the agency's imminent revised boiler air toxics rule, the latest indication of industry's 11th-hour push for EPA to soften the rule's emissions limits and increase compliance flexibility. EPA is revising its boiler maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standard in response to industry fears that the original rule released in March 2011 was unachievable and...

EPA Preparing Framework For Crafting Multipollutant Air Assessments

EPA is developing a framework for how to perform multipollutant science assessments (MSAs) for ambient air pollutants and plans in the next few months to seek outside review of a draft version, though its recent failure to craft an MSA for nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur oxide (SOx) suggests it is likely to miss the 2016 deadline for its first MSA. One source tracking the issue says EPA's switch to performing MSAs, rather than pollutant-by-pollutant assessments, will likely be an...

Industry Criticizes EPA Calculation Of Exposure Risk From Vapor Intrusion

Industry is criticizing EPA's approach to calculating the potential for subsurface contamination to migrate to indoor air, raising concerns over a technical document expected to be a component of the agency's final vapor intrusion guidance and over a Region III proposal to offer government-funded mitigation for vapor intrusion at homes near a Superfund site in Pennsylvania. Industry argues the so-called attenuation factors in the EPA documents are unnecessarily conservative and flawed because of incorrect assumptions of the rate at which...

Cleanup Experts Urge Federal Study Of Long-Term Management Options

A trio of well-known hazardous waste cleanup experts is asking EPA and the Department of Defense (DOD) to study whether allowing responsible parties to transfer their future liability for a site with residual contamination to a dedicated management organization might better protect human health than current remediation policies. The proposal from Lenny Siegel, Michael Kavanaugh and William Walsh to allow long-term management-only organizations (LTMOOs) to oversee monitoring and other post-cleanup measures at the many hazardous waste sites with residual contamination...

EPA Raising Concerns Over Draft House Bill On Collecting Recycling Data

EPA is raising concerns over draft House legislation that is intended to boost domestic recycling of paper, glass and aluminum, saying that while the agency supports the bill's goals, its reliance solely on voluntarily reported data will result in significant data gaps that would prevent the private sector from increasing the use of recyclable materials. At issue is legislation being developed by Reps. John Sullivan (R-OK) and Dan Boren (D-OK) that would authorize EPA, with assistance from the Energy and...

As Final EPA Rule Nears, Laundered Wipe Group Study Downplays Risks

As EPA moves closer to completing a long-stalled rule to ease waste-handling requirements for reusable and disposable industrial towels, the group that represents the reusable wipes sector is touting a study that suggests that laundered reusable shop towels pose little to no health risk to workers relative to risk values set by EPA. The Textile Rental Services Association of America (TRSA), which favors reusable towels, June 29 issued a risk analysis sponsored by consulting firm ARCADIS that challenges a 2011...

Facing Blight, Ohio Officials Urge EPA To Soften Asbestos Demolition Rules

Ohio lawmakers are calling on EPA to "reassess" its requirement that contractors and others survey homes slated for demolition for asbestos, saying it is impeding efforts to remove blighted houses from cities -- an issue that other states are also struggling to address in the wake of the recession and foreclosure crisis that left millions of homes vacant. Sources say that EPA in recent meetings has provided little indication of whether officials may take action on the request, though Rep...

/index.php?option=com_iwpfile&file=jul2012/epa2012_1279.pdf


Industry Seeks Pipeline Suit Role

Industry is seeking to intervene in environmentalists' lawsuit challenging the administration's use of streamlined Clean Water Act (CWA) permits for an Arkansas wastewater pipeline, hinting that delays to completion of the pipeline will complicate negotiations with EPA to resolve compliance issues over existing discharge permits. The lawsuit, Ouachita Riverkeeper and Save the Ouachita v. Major General Merdith W.B, Temple and the Army Corps of Engineers , is significant because it echoes some of the issues raised in a separate activists'...

EPA Downplays MACT Liability

A top EPA air official is downplaying utilities' concerns that they could face citizen suits for failing to comply with the agency's air toxics rule if they win an EPA order giving them up to five years to meet the standard, saying citizen groups' resource limits and other factors diminish that risk. “Don't take it as a given that operating under an administrative order in the real world is going to create actual liability and actual costs from ancillary legal...

IEPA Withdrawal Notice To EAB

EPA Region V Letter To IEPA

 

epa2012_1278


/index.php?option=com_iwpfile&file=jul2012/epa2012_1277.pdf


Insider -- July 10, 2012

Focus On Fracking An EPA Environmental Appeals Board finding could mean additional review for underground injection well permits, seen as key to shale gas development in the Northeast: EAB Decision Could Raise Bar For Permitting Fracking Wastewater Wells EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has found that the agency's permit review of two wastewater disposal wells for a Pennsylvania-based hydraulic fracturing operation is inadequate to show that drinking water supplies would be protected, setting a high bar for permitting such wells...

EPA Preparing Framework For Crafting Multipollutant Air Assessments

EPA is developing a framework for how to perform multipollutant science assessments (MSAs) for ambient air pollutants and plans in the next few months to seek outside review of a draft version, though its recent failure to craft an MSA for nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur oxide (SOx) suggests it is likely to miss the 2016 deadline for its first MSA. One source tracking the issue says EPA's switch to performing MSAs, rather than pollutant-by-pollutant assessments, will likely be an...

EPA Launches New Risk Assessments For Nanosilver Pesticide Ingredients

EPA is preparing to conduct case-specific ecological and human health risk assessments of nanosilver ingredients in several pesticides, suggesting a new approach to addressing the substances after struggling to craft a regulation requiring registrants to disclose the presence of the materials as a first step in possible regulation. The agency July 6 created a new regulatory docket to take comment on a planned registration review for several pesticides that contain nanosilver ingredients, a review that the agency says it is...

Registrant Joins EPA In Seeking Dismissal Of Nanosilver Pesticide Suit

The Swiss textile-treatments company whose conditional EPA registration for a nanosilver pesticide is being challenged by an environmental group in federal appeals court has joined the agency in calling for the petition's dismissal, saying in a recent brief that the group lacks standing and that its challenge fails on substance. HeiQ Materials AG, which is intervening in the court proceedings on EPA's behalf, argues in a June 28 brief that Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the environmental group challenging the...

Activists Lose Bid To Require Stricter EPA Permit Review For Shale Refinery

EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has rejected a suit from environmentalists seeking to require the agency to conduct a stricter review of the first new domestic refinery slated for construction in years to consider the effect of the developers' decision to process local shale oil rather than Canadian synthetic crude that EPA assessed in its 2009 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis. Environmentalists had challenged the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued by EPA Region VIII for the...

Pages

Not a subscriber? Request 30 days free access to exclusive environmental policy reporting.