The Biden Administration

EPA Finalizes Near-Term Auto GHG Rule With Tougher Requirements

EPA is finalizing an update to greenhouse gas standards for model year 2023-2026 light-duty vehicles, imposing requirements on automakers that will achieve “significant” emissions reductions including tighter standards than it initially proposed for later years covered by the rule. A prepublication version of the rule was issued Dec. 20, along with a regulatory impact analysis , and a fact sheet . Additionally, EPA says in a “by the numbers” document that the final rule “represents the most ambitious light-duty vehicle...

EPA Directs $1 Billion To Clear NPL Backlog While Speeding Other Cleanups

EPA is funneling $1 billion of additional Superfund money provided by the bipartisan infrastructure law to clear a backlog of 49 sites where a lack of funds has prevented cleanup projects from advancing, even as officials ready a second group of sites for which they plan to funnel additional infrastructure funds to accelerate new or ongoing cleanups. The agency’s efforts, which give the first indication of how EPA plans to spend the unprecedented $3.5 billion of additional funding for the...

OIG Lays Out Ambitious Oversight Plans For Key EPA Priorities In 2022

EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is laying out ambitious plans to oversee EPA’s work on addressing top Biden administration priorities in fiscal year 2022, including elevating environmental justice (EJ) and addressing climate change, even as several older, high-profile reports remain a source of friction between the office and the agency. IG Sean O’Donnell also told reporters during a recent roundtable that he plans a major focus on ensuring that the massive influx of cash EPA will receive through the...

IRS Floats List Of Superfund ‘Taxable Substances,’ Raising Industry Fears

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is proposing a new list of “taxable substances” that will be subject to the recently reinstated Superfund taxes, raising chemical industry fears that the list will be much larger than it was when the authority expired in 1996 because Congress lowered the threshold for when substances are subject to the taxes. A spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council (ACC) says it has not yet compared the IRS’ prior list with the just-released list and deferred...

IG Plans To Ramp Up Hiring To Oversee EPA’s Infrastructure Spending

EPA’s Inspector General (IG) is raising concerns that the agency is not prepared to spend -- and adequately oversee -- the massive influx of cash it is getting from the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, and is planning to use millions of dollars in funds provided by the bill to ramp up his office’s hiring to increase its oversight. “The agency faces significant challenges in how it will manage the money it is getting,” IG Sean O’Donnell said at a Dec. 10...

Officials Expect Cumulative Risk Guide To Affect Range Of EPA Programs

Top EPA waste and enforcement officials are anticipating that the agency’s upcoming guidelines for assessing communities’ cumulative risks will embrace an agency-wide or government-wide approach and will affect programs across the board -- such as aiding in prioritizing cleanups and various enforcement efforts. Larry Starfield, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA), told the American Bar Association’s National Environmental Enforcement Conference Dec. 14 that while EPA’s cumulative risk guidance has yet to be issued, “my...

EPA Launches Series Of New Rules To Strengthen Major Policy Items

EPA is launching a series of new rulemakings to address major policy issues across its media areas, including new Clean Air Act emissions standards for power plants, a more-permanent measure defining the reach of the Clean Water Act and new rules governing perfluorinated chemicals, according to the agency’s just-released unified agenda. In addition, the agency is also setting new deadlines for its closely watched chemical risk management rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), according to the agenda ,...

EPA Offers Lengthy Timelines For Major Aspects Of Climate Agenda

EPA is floating new updates for its major climate regulatory initiatives addressing power plants, vehicles and the oil and gas sector, including new timelines for rules that may stretch out toward the end of President Joe Biden’s current four-year term. The updates are included in the agency’s Fall 2021 Unified Agenda, which was released Dec. 10. In one high-profile update to its plans, EPA projects that it will release proposed greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants in July 2022,...

WHEJAC Readies Advice For Scoring Agencies’ Compliance With Justice40

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) is poised to provide advice for how the Biden administration should score agencies’ progress on implementing its Justice40 initiative, part of an effort that the advisors say is aimed at holding EPA and other agencies accountable for meeting the initiative’s goals. The upcoming Justice40 Scorecard, due in February, will be a “mechanism to hold federal agencies accountable” for implementing Justice40 and advancing EJ, Peggy Shepard of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, who...

Biden names administrators for EPA regions 6, 7, 9

President Joe Biden is naming his picks to lead three more EPA regions, announcing Dec. 9 that Earthea Nance, an urban planning professor, will become administrator for Region 6, Meg McCollister, a nonprofit advocate, will head Region 7 and Martha Guzman, a former California utility regulator, will take the reins at Region 9. “These regional appointees will be critical to the President’s efforts to rebuild communities most impacted by the pandemic, the economic recovery and climate change,” the White House...

Biden Sets Sweeping Net-Zero Procurement Goals For Clean Power, ZEVs

President Joe Biden in a new executive order (EO) is targeting a major shift in federal government spending toward clean energy and various other low-carbon products, aiming to leverage the government’s massive vehicle and building footprint to spur broader efforts to combat climate change. In a Dec. 8 EO titled “Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs through Federal Sustainability,” the president outlines five goals for agencies, including to achieve net-zero emissions from federal procurement by 2050. Other goals focus on...

CEQ Pressed To Strengthen EJ Measures In NEPA Via Rule, Guidance

The White House is under pressure to strengthen environmental justice (EJ) considerations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) both as part of a broad rulemaking outlining how agencies conduct reviews and in separate guidance specifically focused on elevating EJ considerations in federal actions subject to the bedrock law. Environmentalists, congressional and state Democrats and others called for such considerations in recently filed comments on the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) proposed phase 1 NEPA rule, which seeks to revoke...

EPA Seeks To Measure EJ Progress But May Need To ‘Improve’ Authority

The director of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ), says the agency is planning to begin aggressively measuring its progress in meeting environmental justice (EJ) goals using first-time metrics required by the upcoming strategic plan, but that if there is not adequate progress by 2026 officials may have to consider asking Congress for new authority. In a recent interview with Inside EPA , Matthew Tejada, OEJ’s director, stresses the “idea that after almost 30 years of practicing and advancing environmental...

EPA, Union Reach ‘Landmark’ Deals On Key Remote-Work Contract Issues

EPA and its largest employee union have signed “landmark” agreements on three major contract issues -- telework, remote work and work schedules -- resolving issues that will be key to the agency’s work during the ongoing pandemic in agreements that union officials say will also shape the future of work at the agency. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238, which represents 7,500 agency personnel across the country, and EPA management signed the agreements over the past few...

Senate EPW Panel Advances Four EPA Nominees, Despite GOP Concerns

The Senate environment committee has advanced four nominees to lead key EPA offices, although nominees tapped to lead the waste, enforcement and research offices drew opposition from Republicans over concerns about the Biden administration’s failure to respond to long-standing climate oversight requests and one nominee’s specific views about the energy sector. The committee at a Dec. 1 business meeting approved and sent to the full Senate for consideration the nominations of David Uhlmann to lead the agency’s enforcement office, Christopher...

States Question EPA’s Civil Rights Authority In Strategic Plan Comments

A host of states are questioning EPA’s authority to bolster civil rights considerations in environmental decision-making in comments filed on the agency’s draft strategic plan for fiscal years 2022-2026, which includes for the first time a discrete goal addressing environmental justice (EJ) and non-discrimination requirements under civil rights law. EPA issued the draft plan Oct. 1, where the EJ and civil rights goals won high praise from advocates , even though many of the plan’s deadlines do not fall until...

EPA’s ‘Yo-Yo’ RMP Policy Leaves Rule Vulnerable In Court, Lawyer Says

EPA’s repeated changes to its Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule could boost court challenges to an expected tightening of the facility safety mandate, as challengers could argue that it is inherently “arbitrary” for three consecutive administrations to overhaul the policy, an industry attorney says. “The fact that they’ve yo-yo’d on” the RMP rule through three presidential administrations raises the question of whether judges will find the continual changes between more- and less-stringent versions of the rule to be “arbitrary” in...

CEQ Plans NEPA Program Analyses To Streamline Low-Carbon Projects

A top White House official says the Biden administration is planning to review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) various federal programs as a way to help speed later review of related low-carbon projects, an effort aimed at easing the challenge officials face as they seek to expedite such projects while also ensuring rigorous reviews. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is looking at “ways that programmatic analysis can be used more frequently and effectively by federal...

Regan’s ‘Justice’ tour: In his own words

EPA Administrator Michael Regan undertook a days-long “Journey for Justice” tour last week to show the agency is serious about bringing environmental justice (EJ) to underserved and overburdened communities by visiting select areas in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi to highlight several communities’ struggles. The trip drew concern from local and national chemical industry groups , some of which, like the Louisiana Chemical Association, sought unsuccessfully to meet with Regan to discuss the trip while also seeking to highlight their efforts...

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