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DOD Preparing To Defend ACWA Costs After Nunn-McCurdy Breach

The Defense Department is under a 60-day deadline to defend to Congress significant cost increases to its alternative chemical weapons destruction program, after signaling last month that it had surpassed the 25 percent cost exceedance threshold set by a 1982 law aimed at curbing escalating costs in weapons programs. The breach of the so-called Nunn-McCurdy statute is the second time DOD's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative (ACWA) program has crossed the threshold limit and has had to defend the necessity of...

GE Seeks High Court Review Of Cleanup Orders Despite Hudson Agreement

The General Electric Company (GE) is asking the Supreme Court to hear its long running constitutional challenge to EPA's ability to issue unilateral cleanup orders under the Superfund law, despite having already agreed to comply with the agency's cleanup plan for a major site that environmentalists feared the suit could impact. GE petitioned the high court Dec. 29 to hear the case General Electric Co. v. Lisa Jackson , in which the company has so far unsuccessfully argued that EPA's...

Chesapeake Bay Lawsuit Marks New Test For EPA's TMDL Power

The American Farm Bureau Federation's (AFBF) legal challenge of EPA's novel, multistate pollution load limit for the Chesapeake Bay watershed could provide a new test of the agency's authority to set pollution limits among different sources and to dictate state actions in cleaning up waterbodies. In its Jan. 10 lawsuit, AFBF, et al. v. EPA , the farm industry group charges the recently finalized Bay total maximum daily load (TMDL) for nutrients and sediment is "fatally flawed" because the allocation...

Court Lifts Stay, Enacting EPA's Program To Permit GHG Sources In Texas

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Jan. 12 lifted a temporary stay of EPA greenhouse gas (GHG) rules in Texas it had granted to allow the court time to assess the state's objections to the agency's plan to take over GHG permitting in the state. The decision marks Texas' third unsuccessful attempt to delay the EPA stationary source rules, and now means an estimated 167 facilities in the state will have to go to...

Activists Say EPA Bid To Stall Boiler MACT Limits Impact Of Court Deadlines

The Sierra Club is urging a federal court to deny EPA's request for a 15-month delay to a court-ordered January deadline for issuing a strict air toxics rule for boilers, warning that approving the delay would undermine future court-ordered deadlines by not requiring EPA to prove that meeting such dates is "impossible." The deadline for issuing the final boiler maximum achievable control technology (MACT) rule was Jan. 16, but a federal judge Jan. 10 decided to defer the court's decision...

Key Attorney In FOIA Case Sees High Court Narrowing Exemption

The attorney who argued a key Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case testing the reach of the law's personnel policies exemption before the Supreme Court last month believes the high court will narrow the exemption while still finding another avenue for the Navy to withhold the explosive safety maps at the center of the FOIA lawsuit. Attorney David Mann, who spoke on a Jan. 13 American Bar Association (ABA) teleconference call on the two pending FOIA cases before the Supreme...

EPA Seeks White House Approval Of Interagency Microbial Risk Guide

EPA has sent for White House review a notice on a key, years-long effort by EPA and other agencies trying to jointly draft microbial risk assessment (MRA) guidelines that EPA says would provide a flexible framework for conducting MRAs that could be applied by different agencies for setting regulatory policies under various statutes. EPA would use the MRAs, when finalized, to assess human health risks associated with, for example, microbial pesticides regulated under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act,...

EPA Eyes New Method For Estimating Health Benefits Of Regulations

EPA is proposing a new method for measuring the public health benefits of its regulations, including reduced mortality levels, a major step that could help the agency defend its regulatory decisions and address long-standing criticisms about its existing method by dropping a measurement that places a statistical value on a human life. EPA late last month released a draft paper, "Valuing Mortality Risk Reductions for Environmental Policy," prior to a Jan. 20-21 meeting of EPA Science Advisory Board's (SAB) augmented...

Rebuffing Industry, EPA Adopts New Ratios For Estimating Dioxins' Risks

Backed by scientific experts, EPA has adopted new ratios, known as toxicity equivalence factors (TEFs), for quantifying the risks and setting cleanup levels for scores of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds, rebuffing long-standing industry criticisms that the use of TEFs is unscientific and can overstate risk. EPA Jan. 6 unveiled a final document, "Recommended Toxicity Equivalence Factors (TEFs) for Human Health Risk Assessments of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin and Dioxin-Like Compounds [TCDD]," that contains the new values. Relevant documents are available on InsideEPA.com. The...

Industry Bid For Strict Chromium 6 Review Could Stymie EPA Water Rule

The chemical industry is urging EPA to seek a more rigorous peer review than the agency currently intends for its recently released draft risk estimate of the ubiquitous metal hexavalent chromium (Cr6), a move that if granted may stall an assessment that will play a critical role in the agency's plan to set a strict, first-time drinking water limit for Cr6. In recently released written comments on the draft assessment, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a chemical industry trade association,...

Industry Seeks Nutrient Trading Program In 2011 Stormwater General Permit

As the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) considers EPA's 2011 construction general permit (CGP), the building industry says it has been lobbying the agency to consider including provisions allowing for a pollution trading program for stormwater runoff to be included in the final rule, which would keep down costs and increase compliance flexibility. EPA sent the 2011 CGP to OMB Dec. 17 for review, and the permit is expected to be finalized by the end of the...

Questions Loom For Federal Facilities Subject To New Stormwater Fee Law

Questions loom for federal facilities that are subject to a new law requiring them to pay local fees to clean up their stormwater, including whether DOD and other government agencies must pay retroactive fees, how to determine if the fees are fairly assessed, and whether the funds for the fees must be secured through a special appropriations process, lawmakers and officials say. The new measure, which was signed into law Jan. 4, requires federal facilities to pay stormwater management fees...

New Pitch For TSCA Reform

Environmentalists are touting a new study finding exposure to multiple chemicals in almost all pregnant women surveyed -- including exposure to a number of long-banned substances -- to bolster their calls for comprehensive reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), though the effort faces an uncertain future. “These findings should be a call to action for Congress and the Administration,” Andy Igrejas, director of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition, said in a Jan. 14 statement. “We’ve known for...

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