ISSUE: Inside EPA

EPA Floats Options For Full, Partial ‘Reallocation’ Of Waived RFS Volumes

EPA is floating a “co-proposal” that suggests either a full “reallocation” of waived biofuel blending volumes for small refiners under the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in future years, or a 50 percent reallocation, under a plan that in effect would see volumes waived for 2023, 2024 and 2025 added instead to proposed volumes for 2026 and 2027. In its proposal announced Sept. 16, EPA suggests a full reallocation of waived volumes to non-exempt refiners could be justified to avoid a...

Optimistic Industry Groups Ramp Up Advocacy For PFAS Reporting Waivers

Industry representatives are optimistic that the Trump EPA will include several exemptions requested by industry in the agency’s revised PFAS reporting rule under TSCA that would ease burdens on regulated entities, but they are nevertheless ramping up their advocacy and urging officials to adopt a host of waivers. Several industry groups are already meeting -- or preparing to meet -- with White House officials reviewing EPA’s draft Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) proposed rule. And one lawyer said he is...

Industry Amps Up Push For Permit Reform As Congress Appears Deadlocked

Industry groups are amping up pressure on Congress to enact bipartisan permitting reforms under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA), arguing growing energy demands to meet national economic and security goals require urgent action, even as lawmakers appear to face a widening divide over the issue. The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) sent a Sept. 16 open letter to congressional leaders of both parties calling for streamlined NEPA permitting requirements, as well as revising landmark...

Environmentalists Sue Over EPA’s Withdrawal Of Slaughterhouse ELG Plan

A coalition of 10 environmental groups is suing EPA over its withdrawal of a Biden-era proposal establishing tough effluent limits to curb nutrient and other releases from meat and poultry product (MPP) facilities, flagging concerns that the Trump administration’s withdrawal violates the Clean Water Act’s (CWA) requirements. The groups filed a Sept. 15 petition for review to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in the suit Cape Fear River Watch, et al., v. EPA , challenging the...

CARB Seeks To Revive Older Auto Emissions Limits After Waiver Fight

California air regulators are launching an emergency rulemaking to reinstate criteria emissions limits that had been superseded by the state’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) and “omnibus” truck nitrogen oxides (NOx) rules, after Congress scuttled preemption waivers for those rules using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). California Air Resources Board (CARB) officials are doing so while asserting their right to enforce the more stringent standards from ACC II and the omnibus rule, in the event the state succeeds in...

EPA Downplays Congressional Directive For GHG Reporting In Repeal Plan

EPA’s proposed rule to scrap nearly all greenhouse gas reporting for industry is brushing aside arguments that Congress directed such reporting over a decade ago, with the agency also claiming it lacks a basis for requiring “continuous” emissions tracking under its Clean Air Act (CAA) information-gathering authority. EPA’s Sept. 12 proposal also acknowledges that undoing its GHG Reporting Rule (GHGRP) could complicate implementation of federal tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as well as clean hydrogen, but the...

Defendant Pushes Constitutional Challenge To CWA Citizen Suit Provisions

A defendant in a Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suit case is urging a federal district court in Pennsylvania to dismiss the suit that alleges violations of the contracting company’s pollutant discharge permit, arguing in part that the law’s citizen suit provisions are an unconstitutional delegation of executive power to private citizens. W.G. Tomko Inc., the defendant in the case, filed an Aug. 26 brief in support of its motion to dismiss Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ) v. W.G. Tomko...

Zeldin Revives Trump NSR Policy Aimed At Barring EPA ‘Second Guessing’

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the agency has re-issued a policy from the first Trump administration aimed at barring officials from “second guessing” states and industry when deciding whether “major source” new source review (NSR) air permits are necessary for new or modified facilities, the latest in a series of NSR revisions he has announced. Zeldin announced the 2017 policy’s reinstatement , reversing the Biden administration 2022 rescission , during a Sept. 15 White House meeting with industry groups, key...

House Panel Weighs Bills To Ease Clean Air Permits, Amid EPA’s NSR Push

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are weighing a series of bills to ease the procedural and substantive burdens industry and states face when seeking and complying with Clean Air Act permits, even as EPA advances guidance and rules to achieve similar goals for the new source review (NSR) program in particular. The committee’s environment panel is holding a Sept. 16 legislative hearing where lawmakers will consider five bills that seek to ease burdens on regulators and regulated...

Former Officials Warn Trump Is Gutting Environmental Enforcement Capacity

Two former top environmental enforcement officials -- one from EPA, one from the Justice Department (DOJ) -- are warning that the Trump administration has gutted the federal government’s capacity to prosecute environmental violations, resulting in a historic enforcement slowdown that is significantly threatening public health and the environment. In addition to regulatory rollbacks, enforcement policy changes and support for the fossil fuel industry, staff losses that have hollowed out enforcement divisions will damage environmental protection for decades, David Uhlmann, who...

EPA Extends Certain TCE Compliance Deadlines Days Ahead Of Bans

EPA is extending certain compliance deadlines in the Biden-era TSCA rule phasing out many uses of trichloroethylene (TCE) that it says critical industry sectors will be unable to meet, just days before the first of those deadlines for wastewater discharges and nuclear fuel manufacturing were set to take effect. EPA released Sept. 12 a pre-publication copy of a Federal Register notice describing the interim final rule, which extends the compliance deadline for the 2024 TCE risk management rule’s ban...

Trump EPA Asks D.C. Circuit To Vacate Four PFAS Drinking Water Limits

The Trump EPA is urging the D.C. Circuit to vacate four of six Biden-era drinking water standards for PFAS, arguing the agency did not follow mandatory procedural requirements when it promulgated them, in an effort to quickly resolve legal questions over whether officials can follow through on their plan to withdraw the landmark limits. The Biden “EPA initially attempted to defend the Rule against forceful legal challenges raised in these petitions for review,” the Trump EPA says in a Sept...

Ruling Could Enable EPA To Retain ‘Defenses’ In Multiple Air Toxics Rules

The recent D.C. Circuit ruling upholding “affirmative defenses” for plant malfunctions from civil liability in Clean Air Act (CAA) Title V permits may enable the agency to reverse or modify its practice of removing such measures from multiple air toxics regulations, sources say. In its Sept. 5 ruling in SSM Litigation Group v. EPA, et al. , a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a Biden-era rule that required the removal...

Judge Allows Reorganization, RIF Suit To Continue Amid Discovery Battle

A federal district court judge is allowing Trump administration critics to continue their lawsuit challenging restructuring and mass firings at EPA and other agencies, rejecting administration arguments that a July Supreme Court order greenlighting the overhauls means the lawsuit should be dismissed. In a vindication for union, nonprofit and local government plaintiffs, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Sept. 9 to broadly reject the Justice Department’s (DOJ’s) motion to dismiss the...

Disbanded DOE Climate Group Poses New Challenges For EPA, Critics Say

Trump administration critics say EPA appears to face a new challenge in addressing criticism of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) report downplaying climate risks -- after DOE disbanded the working group that developed it -- underscoring the possibility EPA could de-emphasize science arguments in a final rule to undo its climate risk finding. It appears that Energy Secretary Chris Wright “is leaving [EPA Administrator] Lee Zeldin holding the bag,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) senior attorney David Doniger tells Inside...

GOP Senators Push Bill To Ease EPA ‘Events’ Waivers For Prescribed Burns

Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) are pushing a draft bill to enable “prescribed” burning of forests to more easily qualify for Clean Air Act “exceptional events” waivers, a measure that Democrats say they may be able to back if supporters fix certain “loopholes” in the current draft. During a Sept. 10 EPW legislative hearing, Republican senators strongly supported the “Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act,” (WEPA), a draft measure that would allow state air regulators to...

EPA Moves To Ease NSR Permitting With New ‘Construction’ Definition

EPA is moving forward to ease new source review (NSR) preconstruction permitting, agreeing with Arizona air officials’ decision that a semiconductor manufacturer does not need a permit to build initial stages of a planned facility, under a narrower definition of “begin actual construction” that appears likely to form the basis for a regulation next year. For now, the agency is implementing the policy on a case-by-case basis, starting with its approval of a semi-conductor facility in Maricopa County, AZ. But...

Zeldin Overruled Top Appointees To Reverse Asbestos Rule Redo Plan

The Trump EPA’s recent 180-degree reversal on its initial plan to rescind the Biden-era TSCA rule phasing out six uses of chrysotile asbestos and instead issue new guidance on the 2024 rule, came after Administrator Lee Zeldin overruled two other senior Trump EPA appointees, a source with knowledge of the internal matter says. According to the source, after a series of emergency meetings in July, Zeldin reversed a decision by Lynn Dekleva, deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical...

Final MAHA Strategy Urges EPA Deregulation, Echoing Leaked Draft

The Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission has released its final strategy for improving children’s health, urging EPA to deregulate pesticides and farm effluents while sidestepping PFAS concerns, aligning closely with a draft leaked in August. The Sept. 9 report backs away from statements by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that pesticides, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other environmental contaminants are central causes of childhood chronic disease, following a lobbying campaign by...

Environmentalists’ Suit Tests EPA’s New Haze Policy Easing State Approvals

Environmental groups are suing over the Trump EPA’s new national policy that allows the agency to more easily approve states’ plans for curbing regional haze, targeting the agency’s approval of West Virginia’s plan that relies on a non-statutory metric in a way that environmentalists claim unlawfully overrides Clean Air Act requirements. National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, and Earthjustice in their Sept. 4 suit filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit challenge the agency’s July 7...

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