Outlook 2015

OUTLOOK 2015

Inside EPA's Outlook 2015 is a comprehensive special report on the major policies EPA is developing this year through a wide range of climate, air, water, toxics and other rules.

Or read individual articles below.

RFS Faces 2015 Challenges As EPA Seeks To Bolster Low-Carbon Biofuels

EPA's flagship renewable fuel standard (RFS) program faces considerable challenges in 2015 as the administration looks to finalize long-overdue blend mandates that could begin to balance the production of low-carbon cellulosic and advanced biofuels with more conventional corn-based ethanol. The corn sector, for example, is likely to oppose any effort that reduces their blending requirements relative to other fuel sources while the oil industry, which is urging Congress to repeal the program, is already charging that EPA's approval of some...

EPA, States Weigh Options To Help Reduce Risks Of Crude Oil Rail Spills

EPA and state environmental agencies are weighing steps that they could take to help minimize adverse impacts such as water pollution from spills resulting from crude oil rail transport accidents, even as the federal and state officials acknowledge their role in the issue is largely limited to dealing with the aftermath of such incidents. Oil industry groups are cautioning against federal or state environmental regulators boosting their role over rail transport. For example, the American Petroleum Institute (API) says that...

EPA Methane Plan May Drive Gas Sector Air Cuts Ahead Of Ozone NAAQS

EPA's imminent plan for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas (GHG) methane from the oil and gas sector may be a greater driver in the near-term for the sector curbing ozone-forming emissions and reducing methane as a co-benefit rather than the agency's plan to tighten its ozone air standard later this year, environmentalists say. “Methane is where the action will be in the short term,” one environmentalist says of air pollution reductions from oil and gas drilling. Even if EPA...

Courts Continue To Wrestle With Superfund Cost Recovery, Insurance Issues

Court battles over which of two cost recovery mechanisms under Superfund law potentially responsible parties (PRPs) at contaminated sites use are expected to continue in 2015 as an unsettled area of the law in the aftermath of earlier Supreme Court rulings, with some PRPs attempting once again to persuade the high court to clarify the issue. Additionally, legal sources say courts may also tackle to what degree insurance payouts should offset contribution claims, an emerging Superfund cost recovery issue. The...

Critics Of EPA's Coal Ash Rule Eye Courts, Congress To Challenge Policy

Critics of EPA's final coal ash disposal rule are looking to legal challenges and Congress to try and win changes to the policy, with industry and Republicans eyeing a bill that would give states more flexibility in enforcing the rule and environmentalists potentially suing EPA for regulating ash as a solid waste rather than a hazardous waste. The final rule released Dec. 19 echoes calls from the power industry, coal ash reuse industry and many states to regulate the substance...

Advocates Struggle With Bid For EPA To Accelerate Facility Safety Policies

Advocates seeking stricter EPA policies for improving industrial facilities' safety and to reduce risks of accidents face a struggle in their bid for the agency to accelerate to later this year its timetable for any new final rules, as EPA instead is saying that it intends to finalize a rule sometime before the end of the Obama administration. EPA has vowed to issue an “alert” in 2015 detailing best practices for facilities to use inherently safer technologies (IST), in order...

Assessments May Give Insight Into EPA Progress On New ESA Approach

Preliminary risk assessments slated for release in 2015 in support of the first reviews EPA is conducting under a new process for analyzing risks of pesticides to endangered species could provide an early glimpse into federal officials' progress on developing the process that agencies will eventually use to assess numerous pesticides nationwide. EPA and federal wildlife officials in 2013 unveiled new “interim approaches” for assessing potential risks of pesticides under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), though they cautioned the new...

Despite IRIS Improvements, Industry Looks For More Substantive Changes

Regulated entities are continuing to press EPA to make substantive changes to its influential toxicity assessment program, especially in how program staff performs assessments, even while praising wide-ranging changes that the program's director, Ken Olden, has made since he took over the program in 2012. Olden's approach to leading the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) has garnered him many plaudits from long-standing IRIS critics over the past two years. But regulated entities and non-governmental organizations continue to push Olden and...

EPA Faces Ongoing Mutagenicity Challenges Absent Assessment Framework

EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) is continuing to face a series of challenges regarding mutagenicity and its use of mode of action (MOA) data, information that informs risk assessors how a chemical moves through the body and causes effects and also determines how stringently chemicals' carcinogenicity is assessed under the agency's cancer risk assessment guidelines. These issues are critical for NCEA, which operates and maintains EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the agency's influential database of some 550...

EPA Eyes Ways To Encourage Climate Resiliency After Early Challenges

EPA is exploring revamped approaches to encouraging water utilities to include climate change resiliency considerations into infrastructure and other planning activities after several agency efforts to integrate resiliency into water planning stalled last year due to reluctance from both the financial sector and some small utilities that remain skeptical about anything connected with climate change. Agency officials have suggested the need to modify their approach, emphasizing to communities the need to respond to drought and flooding without specifically tying it...

EPA Wrestling With Drinking Water Protection Following Lake Erie Crisis

EPA is continuing to wrestle with how best to protect drinking water sources from the harmful effects of excess nutrient pollution following a drinking water emergency in Toledo, OH, that has led regulators to re-examine existing regulatory mechanisms for addressing contaminants like cyanotoxins and other sources. “It's hard to say that anything will be different” in 2015, one drinking water industry source says. “Frankly there's nothing imminent. But hopefully this incident has, if anything, started to demonstrate the need or...

EPA Approach For Haze Emissions Controls Spurs Debate On Consistency

Observers are split over whether EPA is taking a consistent approach at headquarters and among its regions on how it reviews the adequacy of best available retrofit technology (BART) emissions control requirements in states' regional haze reduction plans, an important factor in EPA determining whether to impose its own plans on states. The regional haze program requires states to develop state implementation plans (SIPs) describing the controls they will require as BART on industrial sources of pollution, in order to...

EPA Interstate Pollution Policy In Doubt As Stricter Ozone Standard Looms

EPA's policy on reducing interstate transport of ozone-forming air pollutants remains in doubt after years of lawsuits and regulatory changes, prompting uncertainty among state air regulators and others about what options the agency will have to help them attain what is expected to be a stricter ozone ambient air limit finalized late in 2015. Existing agency regulations are designed to help states attain years-old ozone and particulate matter (PM) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and do not account for...

States Face Uncertainty On Strategies For Attaining Stricter Ozone NAAQS

States face uncertainty over how they will attain a potentially stricter ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) that EPA could finalize in October, as EPA appears to be offering few examples of strategies states could use to cut ozone beyond existing programs, such as its vehicle air rules and “exceptional” events air policy. EPA says in its recent proposal to tighten the ozone NAAQS that it will be up to states to determine how to attain a tighter standard...

High Court's Utility MACT Case May Set Precedent On EPA Air Rules' Costs

The Supreme Court could set a new precedent this year on the extent EPA must consider costs in setting air toxics rules and potentially other emissions, depending on how it decides a case it will hear challenging the agency for not considering economic costs in its decision to regulate power plants with an air toxics rule, sources say. Although the pending case focuses on “a fairly unique provision” of the Clean Air Act that discusses cost reviews for air toxics...

ESPS Fight, Oil Price Drop Unlikely To Stall EPA's 2015 Vehicle GHG Push

EPA is slated in 2015 to advance another round of mobile source greenhouse gas (GHG) rules, including a second round of heavy-duty vehicle standards and a preliminary rule on aircraft GHGs, despite low oil prices that could pose long-term challenges for achieving assumed benefits of the vehicle rules and spillover attacks from the heated battle over GHG power plant rules. The heavy-duty “phase II” rulemaking, as well as the aircraft rule, are likely to set the tone for the remainder...

Past EPA Power Plant Rule Changes May Set Precedent For Trimming ESPS

If recent EPA rules for power plants are any precedent, the agency's proposed rule governing plants' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is likely to be significantly scaled back when issued in final form later in 2015. While environmentalists generally disagree with that assumption, industry and others sources point to major revisions between the proposed and final versions of EPA's mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) and its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), both finalized in 2011, as two important precedents for...

Despite GOP Gains, Preemption Remains Major Hurdle For TSCA Reform

Preemption of state chemical management programs will likely remain the major hurdle to the 114th Congress approving legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) despite Republicans winning control of both chambers last year, sources say, with Democrats seen as unwilling to allow preemption of the programs. TSCA reform legislation failed in the 113th Congress due to divisions between the GOP and Democrats on how to craft such a bill, with preemption repeatedly seen as a stumbling block. For...

Obama Faces 'Hard Choice' On Bill To Block EPA's CWA Jurisdiction Rule

President Obama will face a “hard choice” if the Republican-led Congress follows through on expected plans to send him legislation that would block EPA's rule to define Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction, sources say, as Obama might choose to focus his political capital on protecting the agency's power plant climate rules instead. Democrats have no options in the GOP House to halt legislation that would either prohibit EPA finalizing the rule or bar the agency from using any funds to...

Supreme Court Weighs Major Legal Battles Over EPA's Air, Water Policies

The Supreme Court is weighing major legal battles over significant EPA air and water policies this year, including its upcoming oral arguments in a case challenging the agency's utility air toxics rule; whether to grant review of a suit over Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction findings; and a pending decision on agencies' flexibility to reinterpret rules. The justices' eventual rulings in the cases could, depending on how they decide, set important new precedents on EPA's approach to rulemaking and enforcement,...

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