Water

Regulatory and legislative disputes over the clean water and safe drinking water acts have major implications for dischargers, utilities and others, and our Water section features the latest news from EPA, the courts and Congress.

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Regulatory and legislative disputes over the clean water and safe drinking water acts have major implications for dischargers, utilities and others, and our Water section features the latest news from EPA, the courts and Congress.

EPA’s Proposed FY26 Budget Cuts May Stymie Range Of PFAS Goals

The Trump EPA in its fiscal year 2026 budget justification appears to be supporting a swath of initiatives to tackle PFAS contamination, including Superfund cleanups, drinking water issues and toxicity research, but the agency’s planned cuts across several programs related to PFAS are likely to undercut that commitment. EPA’s recently released FY26 budget justification repeatedly signals EPA’s intent to prioritize addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination through Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) cleanups, research into toxicity...

Environmentalists Sue Over Corps Approval Of Controversial Yazoo Project

Environmentalists are suing EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the agencies’ Biden-era approval of the construction and operation of a controversial flood project in Mississippi, citing a decades-old Clean Water Act (CWA) “veto” of the project, violations of the water law and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and more. Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club and Healthy Gulf filed a June 30 complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking declaratory and injunctive...

States Detail Broad Effects To Water Programs Due To FY26 Budget Cuts

State regulators are detailing broad impacts that the Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget cuts for EPA would have on state water quality programs, warning of potential program collapse and failure to meet federal regulatory requirements, as well as significant permitting delays that could pose a threat to the administration’s agenda. The Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA) on June 17 posted a pair of documents on its website that it says detail “the potential impacts of the President’s...

Environmentalists Seek ‘Cleanup’ For California’s Landmark CEQA Rollback

California environmental, labor and tribal groups are seeking to convince state lawmakers to quickly craft “cleanup” legislation to narrow landmark rollbacks to the state’s umbrella environmental protection law for housing and industrial development projects, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) enacted June 30 as part of the fiscal year 2025-26 budget. In statements issued after Newsom signed budget legislation scaling back the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), environmentalists urged lawmakers to make good on their commitments to consider easing the rollback,...

Pentagon Readies Another Deadline Extension For Ending PFAS-Foam Use

Pentagon officials are briefing lawmakers on their plans to exercise a second one-year waiver for the military’s upcoming deadline to end use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam, citing various difficulties including the large number of assets that need to transition, a shift in Defense Department (DOD) priorities and disposal limitations. “Although the Department has made significant progress, it needs additional time to ensure a methodical and safe transition of over 1,000 facilities and over 6,000 mobile assets,” the Office of the...

EPA Sets Summer Deadline For Biden ELG Rule Deadline Extensions

Citing industry concerns, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is planning to soon propose a rule extending compliance deadlines for zero-discharge requirements in the Biden-era rule governing effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for power plants, leaving substantive changes to those requirements for a second rulemaking. EPA issued a June 30 statement highlighting its plans to follow-through on Zeldin’s March deregulatory announcements, which also included plans to revise the Biden EPA’s power plant ELG rule. “Domestic energy production has never been more important than...

Supreme Court Denies Industry Petitions To Reverse Citizen Suit Cases

The Supreme Court is denying industry groups’ petitions to review and reverse two separate suits examining the scope of citizen suit enforcement under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (CWA), a move that environmentalists are applauding as allowing plaintiffs to continue to pursue enforcement actions amid the Trump rollbacks. The high court in a June 30 order list denied certiorari in the suits Port of Tacoma, et al. v. Puget Soundkeeper Alliance and ExxonMobil Corp., et...

Resisting Zeldin, Lawmakers Offer Bill To Codify Biden’s SDWA PFAS Rule

Two House lawmakers -- one Democrat, one Republican -- are pushing a bill to codify the Biden EPA rule regulating six PFAS in drinking water, an attempt to preserve the rule in the face of efforts by Administrator Lee Zeldin to rescind and reconsider standards for four contaminants and allow more time to comply with the remaining two. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI), co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional PFAS Task Force, introduced H.R. 4168 , June 26,...

H.R. 4168

Letter To Zeldin


House GOP Advances CWA Overhaul Bill, Raising Doubts On Senate Action

House Republicans have voted on party lines to move their legislation aimed at overhauling Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting provisions through the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee (T&I), prompting warnings from Democrats that the bill is unlikely to advance in the Senate even though it seeks to address “important issues.” During a June 25 markup, the full T&I committee voted 34-30 to approve H.R. 3898, with the final measure incorporating amendments pushed by GOP members of the committee, while rejecting those...

FY25 Marks Start Of Trump EPA Plan To Strip Climate, EJ From SRF Funds

EPA’s fiscal year 2025 allotment of state revolving loan funds (SRF) marks the start of Trump administration efforts to strip Biden-era climate and environmental justice (EJ) mandates from water infrastructure projects funded via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), though officials say they plan to impose formal prohibitions on such funds in FY26. EPA last month issued final allotment tables for clean and drinking water SRF funding from the BIL general supplemental and emerging contaminants capitalization grants, as well as base...

House Democrats Seek To Scale Back Republican’s CWA Streamlining Bill

House Democrats on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee are proposing a series of amendments they plan to offer at an upcoming markup that seek to narrow or kill Republican legislative provisions aimed at overhauling key portions of the Clean Water Act (CWA), with some amendments testing potential bipartisan support on certain issues. The committee is scheduled to hold a June 25 markup of H.R. 3898 , a measure that compiles the dozens of bills that the committee’s Republicans issued on...

EPA Support For PFAS Science May Not Save Biden-Era Water Criteria

The Trump EPA’s support for the science behind the Biden-era drinking water standards for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) may undercut industry calls for the agency to scrap the prior administration’s draft water quality criteria to protect human health (HHC) which are based on the same science. But one environmentalist says that even though the Trump EPA is backing the science underlying the PFOA and PFOS drinking water standards, officials may still decide to scrap or significantly...

Courts Expected To Settle CERCLA Liability Question Over Biosolids Use

As questions grow over potential Superfund liability for application of PFAS-containing biosolids, attorneys say they expect courts will be drawn into settling unresolved legal questions that are intensifying uncertainty for those seeking to dispose of biosolids, parties involved in real estate transactions at disposal sites, their consultants and others. Among other things, the attorneys expect that courts will ultimately have to decide whether such applications are covered by the exclusion under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA)...

Split 9th Circuit Panel Faults EPA’s Decision Not To Revise Various ELGs

In a win for environmentalists, a split 9th Circuit panel is finding that EPA unlawfully failed to revise effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for seven industrial categories, concluding that the agency’s biennial ELG program plan constitutes a final agency action subject to judicial review. Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit authored a June 18 opinion , joined by Judge John Owens, in Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA, et al. , granting in part environmentalists’ petition...

Parties seek to resume suit over EPA vessel discharge standards

EPA and other parties are urging a federal appellate court to resume litigation challenging the Biden EPA’s rule governing pollution releases from ships following an abeyance in the case to allow the Trump administration to review the measure. Parties filed a June 13 joint motion to govern future proceedings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the suit Lake Carriers’ Association v. EPA , saying they “all agree that the three consolidated actions ...

EPA Signals Priorities For WOTUS Revision Ahead Of Rule Development

EPA is signaling that its upcoming rule re-defining “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) will seek to provide clarity for future jurisdictional determinations and will also consider states’ diverse hydrologies, key concerns that industry and state groups highlighted in their recent public comments to the agency. In a June 17 statement , EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced their completion of “a robust series of listening sessions” seeking input from stakeholders on “real-world and practical experience” with...

Corps Issues Draft CWA General Permits, Largely Retaining Existing Rules

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is issuing its draft five-year overhaul of dozens of Clean Water Act (CWA) dredge-and-fill general permits for pipelines, transmission lines and other projects, with officials proposing minimal changes to the existing general permits and adding one to improve the passage of fish through aquatic ecosystems. The Army Corps’ proposal to reissue and modify its nationwide permits (NWPs) is scheduled to be published in the June 18 Federal Register . The Corps says it...

ECOS Renews Warning On State Delegations Due To Trump EPA’s FY26 Cuts

The Environmental Council of States (ECOS), which represents state environmental commissioners, is renewing its warning that states may need to reconsider their implementation of federal environmental programs in light of the massive cuts to states that Trump EPA’s fiscal year 2026 budget requests. “Dramatic budget cuts to EPA that are passed along to states will incapacitate state environmental programs while creating massive uncertainty for state legislatures and regulated entities across the United States,” James Kenney, cabinet secretary of the New...

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