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With considerable fanfare, including news conferences in every EPA region, the Agency unveiled its Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a large class of manufactured chemicals that have proven to be highly effective in many industrial applications and have also spread risks to human health through sources of drinking water across the nation. […]
It is not a stretch to say that the 2016 amendments to the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) were motivated to a large extent by the EPA’s inability under the law to ban, or at least significantly restrict, industrial and commercial uses of asbestos. Under new authority provided in the amendments, the Agency promptly […]
Although the EPA is at the moment essentially crippled in the midst of the ongoing government shutdown, we have a few enforcement items to report from late 2018. Our latest roundup of five cases includes RCRA, EPCRA, and TSCA violations.
The EPA has issued its first-draft risk evaluation for the first 10 chemicals the Agency must evaluate under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The EPA’s enforcement of violations of environmental laws and regulations at federal facilities is a complicated business that has been addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court (Ohio v. United States Department of Energy, 1992, which affirmed federal facility sovereign immunity with respect to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)), presidential Executive Orders, and by […]
Responding to requests from manufacturers and Third-Party Certifiers (TPCs) for additional regulatory clarity, the EPA is proposing a suite of technical amendments to its regulations to control formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products. According to the Agency, the proposal would streamline certain required testing and certification provisions required in its final rule (December 13, 2016, […]
The 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) state that by December 22, 2019, the EPA must have at least 20 high-priority chemical substances undergoing risk evaluation. Additionally, by this date, at least 20 chemical substances must have been designated as low-priority substances, or substances for which a risk evaluation is not warranted […]
The 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) require that the EPA charge fees to persons who either submit information the Agency must review or manufacture chemicals for which the Agency must conduct risk evaluations. The EPA has now published a final rule that establishes fees for certain activities under TSCA Sections 4, […]
After the EPA extended the public comment period on its problem formulation documents for the first 10 chemicals that will receive risk evaluations under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), major stakeholders provided radically divergent views of both the documents and the EPA’s approach to developing them.
In our first environmental enforcement report for August 2018, there were two fines of over $1,000,000. In our second roundup for the month, there’s another one! Of course, there was also a fine for a mere $350, so it’s a wide range. Take a look at six recent cases and the penalties that were doled […]