Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit vacated the District Court judgment in a Clean Water Act citizens’ suit, because the basis for the judgment had been undermined by the Supreme Court decision in Maui. The decision is not a surprise, given that Maui explicitly rejected the prior 9th Circuit test for when discharges to groundwater are subject to the NPDES permitting regime. … More
Monthly Archives: September 2021
Boston Regulates Building GHG Emissions: The Next Few Years Will Be Very Interesting
Last week, the Boston City Council approved amendments to the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance. The changes are being referred to as “BERDO 2.0”, which almost understates the scope of the revisions. As indicated by its name, since its original enactment, BERDO only dealt with reporting and disclosure. Now, however, Boston will be imposing limits on GHG emissions from large buildings.
The limits will first be effective in 2025,… More
Environmental Impact Review and Environmental Justice: How Hard Will It Be To Merge the Two?
Environmental justice is clearly an idea whose time has – finally – come. The need to find the intersection between the search for racial justice and efforts to save the planet is undeniable. If we get it right, we’ll be at least partially solving two problems at once. First, mobilizing underserved communities in the fight against climate change and other environmental problems increases the number of voices arguing for aggressive action,… More
Implementing Maui Remains a Case-by-Case Affair, at Least for Now
Last week, EPA withdrew guidance issued in the waning days of the Trump Administration interpreting the Supreme Court decision in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund. As the masochists who follow the torturous case law we call Clean Water Act jurisprudence are well aware, SCOTUS ruled in Maui that discharges from point sources to groundwater that are the “functional equivalent” of a direct discharge to surface water are required to obtain NPDES permits.… More
The Trump WOTUS Rule Is Vacated; Now We Know What’s Next
Last week, I reported that Judge Rosemary Marquez had vacated the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule. I also asked “what’s next”? EPA and the Army Corps have now answered that question, at least for the short run. In a brief announcement on EPA’s web page, EPA stated that:
the agencies have halted implementation of the Navigable Waters Protection Rule and are interpreting “waters of the United States” consistent with the pre-2015 regulatory regime until further notice.… More
It’s Important to Acknowledge Good News — The End of Leaded Gasoline
As climate change rightly has dominated recent discussions of environmental policy, it’s been easy to forget how much progress has been made in the past fifty years. I was reminded of the extent of that progress by the story in Bloomberg (subscription required) that the last refinery in the entire world to produce leaded gasoline has ceased operations. There’s no doubt that that’s something to be celebrated.
I recently did a post asking whether exposure to particulate matter affects cognitive abilities. … More