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In Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency v. Whittaker Corporation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in April “clarified that [the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act’s (CERCLA)] prohibition on double recovery does not preclude a finding of liability under CERCLA, [if] the relief ultimately granted does not allow recovery of double […]
By a tally of 6 to 3, the U.S. Supreme Court found that under certain circumstances, a discharge of pollution from a point source that travels in groundwater before entering a navigable water subjects the discharger to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Navigable Waters Rule (NWR), issued by the Corps and the EPA, will effectively remove 51% of the Corps’s mapped wetlands from federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Much of that eliminated inventory was subject to federal protection under the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Water […]
In February 2019, the EPA issued its Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The Plan listed five priority actions and four short-term actions to address “key PFAS-related challenges.” One of the priority actions is to provide guidance for groundwater cleanup at sites contaminated with the two PFAS that have prompted the most concern—perfluorooctanoic […]
In 2018, the EPA issued the first of two sets of amendments to the Agency’s 2015 regulations (April 17, 2015, Federal Register (FR)) governing the disposal of coal combustion residuals (CCR) generated by electric power plants. Among other things, the 2015 rule directed that the owners and operators (O/O) of CCR units (i.e., landfills and […]
In its latest maneuver to shrink the regulatory legacy of the Obama administration, the EPA is withdrawing a proposal that would have imposed standards on the generation of byproduct materials associated with uranium and thorium in situ recovery (ISR).
In a final rule, the EPA has added a subsurface intrusion component to the hazard ranking system (HRS) the Agency uses when considering whether to add sites to the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL). Until this action, the HRS, which was promulgated in 1990, did not consider the threat posed by subsurface intrusion when evaluating […]