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Some Doubt Push To Speed Transmission, Citing States’ Pipeline Actions

Clean energy experts are clashing about whether to grant federal regulators additional authority to override state opposition to electric transmission projects that are needed to integrate large amounts of renewables onto the grid, with some critics citing states’ prior efforts to block gas pipelines to argue such a move wouldn’t necessarily expedite power projects. “One thing I hear from the natural gas industry is maybe it used to be that federal permitting was a good way to make things faster,...

GOP Hill Control Could Spark Budget Fights On Biden Climate Priorities

The prospect that Republicans will control both chambers of Congress next year could create new budget challenges for the Biden administration’s climate agenda -- including possible bids to offset the new climate law’s spending with EPA and other agency funding cuts or enact restrictive policy riders in spending bills, observers say. “If Congress is all of one party, it heightens the possibility that appropriations [for federal agencies] wind up getting contested,” Republican strategist Mike McKenna tells Inside EPA’s Climate Extra...

Court Allows Environmentalists To Intervene In GHG Risk Finding Suit

An appellate court is allowing environmentalists to formally help defend EPA’s greenhouse gas risk finding that provides threshold authority to regulate the emissions under the Clean Air Act, after they argued a suit from a free-market group threatens to undo a series of important existing and future regulations. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in the case are pressing the court to revisit its prior decisions upholding the agency’s 2009 GHG endangerment finding, charging they are inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s recent invocation...

EPA Lists More Areas Requiring ‘Exceptional Events’ Mitigation Plans

EPA is listing more areas around the country that are required to craft plans to mitigate the emissions impacts of “exceptional events,” such as wildfires or windstorms, plans that are required for states to win approval on their growing number of requests to exclude pollution spikes from such events when demonstrating attainment with air standards. In a May 12 Federal Register notice , EPA notifies 15 additional areas in California, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming that they have two...

West Virginia Leads 19 States Against MATS Proposal, Bucking Industry

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) is leading a 19-state coalition in opposition to EPA’s threshold proposal to again find regulation of power plants’ air toxics “appropriate and necessary” (A&N) under the mercury and air toxics standards (MATS), despite broad support for the finding from power sector and many other industry groups. In April 11 comments on EPA’s proposal, Morrisey and the AGs of Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South...

Regan Taps California Official As Advisor Despite EJ Groups’ Prior Concerns

EPA Administrator Michael Regan is planning to name Grant Cope, a California toxics department official, to serve as a senior counselor to support the waste and toxics offices, an informed source says, despite prior concerns from environmental justice (EJ) groups who previously urged Regan to refrain from tapping Cope to lead the waste office. In his new position, Cope will work in the administrator’s office on issues related to the Office of Land & Emergency Management (OLEM) and the Office...

Power Sector Warns NWP 12 Suit Threatens Multiple CWA General Permits

The Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents investor-owned electric companies, is warning that environmentalists’ challenge to a Clean Water Act (CWA) dredge-and-fill general permit for oil and gas pipelines is not just a threat to efficient permitting for those projects but could imperil the validity of similar permits for other sectors. The ability of EEI members to build and operate clean energy requires the regular development of new infrastructure and to maintain and repair existing infrastructure in a timely way,...

Water Agencies Pan California’s Draft Chrome-6 MCL, Citing Massive Costs

Numerous water supply agencies and industry groups are criticizing California regulators’ proposed new maximum contaminant level (MCL) for hexavalent chromium (chrome-6) of 10 parts per billion (ppb), citing massive projected costs to comply that they say will overburden their customers with soaring rates. “The establishment of the MCL at the proper level, as you know, has really significant implications with regard to affordability and the human right to water. And some of the numbers even that were presented here --...

Fearing Costs, Industry Backs EPA’s Bid To End RCRA ‘Corrosivity’ Suit

A range of major industry sectors is backing EPA in its fight against a whistleblower group’s effort to strengthen the agency’s “corrosivity” standard under the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA), with industry citing major adverse cost, waste disposal and beneficial reuse impacts that would result from the changes being sought by petitioners. “Amending the corrosivity characteristic as requested would result in classifying as ‘hazardous’ millions of tons more material than could be accommodated in currently available Subtitle C landfills,...

Congress Hikes EPA’s FY22 Budget But Declines To Create New EJ Office

Congress is poised to boost EPA’s fiscal year 2022 budget to $9.56 billion as part of its just-released omnibus spending package -- a $323 million hike from its currently enacted funding, including an additional $83 million for environmental justice (EJ), but the bill stops short of creating a new EJ office as the White House sought. Instead, lawmakers are urging the administration to provide a detailed proposal for the new office in its upcoming FY23 budget request. The House and...

Democrats Seek To Preserve Water Funding In Scaled-Back Spending Bill

Key Democrats are pledging to do all they can to ensure a potential scaled-down budget bill includes additional water funding for EPA and other agencies to finance lead service line (LSL) replacements, bolster utilities’ resiliency and assist low-income customers, but are acknowledging they cannot guarantee the provisions will survive any negotiations. “As we scale it down, I don’t know what falls out and what stays in,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) panel...

Environmentalists Seek To Resume LCR Suit But Face Utilities’ Opposition

Environmentalists are seeking to resume litigation over Trump-era lead and copper drinking water rule while pushing back on EPA’s request to keep the suit on hold, arguing there is nothing to stop the court from acting now, but drinking water utilities are backing the agency, charging they will be harmed by regulatory uncertainty if it proceeds. “Petitioners challenge a final rule that is in effect now, and Congress declared a clear preference for immediate review of Safe Drinking Water Act...

Dam Suit Tests States’ CWA 401 Waivers As EPA Raises Bay Concerns

Environmentalists are testing the conditions under which a state can waive Clean Water Act (CWA) water quality certifications for federally approved projects, arguing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) wrongly excluded conditions for a dam in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that EPA has warned could imperil the bay’s cleanup. In their Feb. 4 opening brief in Waterkeepers Chesapeake, et al. v. FERC , environmentalists are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate FERC’s...

White House Launches Initiative To Tighten Water Sector’s Cybersecurity

The White House is expanding the Biden administration’s industrial control system cybersecurity initiative to include wastewater and drinking water systems, seeking to bolster EPA and other agencies’ efforts in the sector that have long been viewed as inadequate and in need of significant strengthening. “There is absolutely inadequate resilience across the water sector,” a senior administration official told reporters. But the initiative is voluntary, according to senior officials, who noted that the federal government has limited regulatory authority to impose...

EPA Under Renewed Pressure To Strengthen Chemical Facility Safety Rule

EPA is under renewed pressure to significantly strengthen protections under its chemical facility safety rule for communities living near industrial facilities, with state and local lawmakers from more than a dozen states citing environmental justice (EJ) concerns and urging measures beyond those established by the Obama administration. In a Jan. 26 letter , more than 70 state and local lawmakers urge EPA Administrator Michael Regan to revamp EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule in order to better protect communities near...

EPA Rejects EJ Group’s Call For Freight Rules But Eyes Funding Boost

EPA has told environmental justice (EJ) advocates that it will not agree to their calls to issue air rules for locomotives and other polluting sources in the freight sector, including at ports, instead opting to distribute targeted funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to the most-impacted communities to more quickly address their concerns. But sources with the Moving Forward Network (MFN), a coalition of 50 EJ and environmental groups that advocates to limit harms from the global freight transportation system,...

EPA, Supporters Oppose Effort To Reinstate Trump-Era CWA 401 Rule

EPA, Democratic state attorneys general (AGs) and environmental groups are urging a federal appeals court to deny a request from industry groups and Republican state AGs to stay a lower court’s vacatur of the Trump-era water quality certification rule pending appeal, with environmentalists going a step further and calling on the court to dismiss the case. The parties seeking to reinstate the Trump-era Clean Water Act section 401 rule cannot show a likelihood of success on the merits and have...

Supreme Court Eyes Revisiting WOTUS Definition With Sackett Case

The Supreme Court is poised to decide whether to hear a case that seeks to narrow the definition of wetlands subject to Clean Water Act (CWA) protections, with supporters calling the case a “simple means” to clarify once and for all the scope of the law and environmentalists warning the court’s new conservative majority could decimate regulatory oversight. If the justices agree to hear the case, it could result in a ruling that “gut[s] federal protections for clean water,” Jon...

EPA Urged To Rethink Longstanding Approach To Brownfields Cleanups

As EPA prepares to distribute billions of dollars of cleanup funds under the bipartisan infrastructure law, supporters of brownfields cleanups and a key Democratic lawmaker are urging the agency to rethink its long-running practice of requiring cleanup only to levels required to meet future land use needs, saying a new approach is needed to prevent polluting facilities from locating on remediated sites near environmental justice (EJ) communities. During a Dec. 16 webinar sponsored by the National Brownfields Coalition, Rep. Dan...

Democrats Urge EPA To Tighten Emission Rules On Freight-Related Sources

Fifty Democratic lawmakers are urging EPA to tighten emission standards for various freight-related mobile sources of pollution by 2025, including locomotives, ocean-going vessels, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, non-road diesel engines, and aircraft, to improve air quality in mostly poor minority areas near ports and railyards. “As you may know, 13 million people live near marine ports and rail yards and another 45 million live and attend school within 300 feet of the highway and rail corridors used to move freight,”...

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