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Facilities subject to Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act—better known as the Risk Management Program (RMP)—won a significant deregulatory victory with the EPA’s issuance of its RMP Reconsideration Rule. The Reconsideration Rule rescinds major portions of the RMP Amendments Rule the Obama EPA issued in January 2017.
Under an EPA proposal, a populous industrial sector the Agency calls the Organic Liquids Distribution (OLD) source category would be subject to new Clean Air Act (CAA) amendments pertaining to storage tanks, transfer operations, equipment leaks, and flares.
Following its Clean Air Act (CAA) Section 112 Residual Risk and Technology Review (RTR) of the 2002 and 2005 National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for the Ethylene Production source category, the EPA is proposing significant revisions for flaring at these facilities.
Seven years after the Obama administration issued major amendments to Clean Air Act (CAA) New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) affecting the oil and gas (O&G) sector and 3 years after it issued another set of amendments, the EPA is proposing to rescind substantial parts of both actions. First, the Agency wants to remove O&G storage […]
Two challenges filed from opposite directions against the EPA’s 2015 primary or health-based National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for Ozone were denied by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. At one end, environmental and health advocacy groups argued that the standard was insufficiently protective of children. At the […]
In a majority opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed a petition from the state of California and environmental groups to have the court review the legality of a memo William L. Wehrum, the assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, issued to all Regional Air Division directors.
The EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards recently issued guidance on how information on prescribed fires on wildland may be factored into exceptional events demonstrations required by Section 319(b) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). If the Agency accepts a state’s exceptional event demonstration, air pollution resulting from the event is excluded from […]
The EPA is proposing to amend its New Source Review (NSR) regulations (40 CFR 51.166 and 51.165) to allow the emissions decreases from a single project to be included in Step 1 of the NSR applicability test. The EPA has interpreted existing regulations to indicate that only emissions increases may be considered in Step 1, […]
The EPA’s proposed 2020 Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) for petroleum refiners, which are required under the Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), were greeted with almost universal disapproval from the ethanol industry and the farmers who grow crops that are converted into ethanol.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected challenges the Sierra Club mounted against procedures the EPA uses to approve plans states develop to monitor compliance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).