Author: Daniel L. Klein

Mountain range in the morning
NEPA
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Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Reinstates Biden-Era NEPA Regulations

While shifting political winds don’t literally blow through the trees, their force and impact can cause environmental policy to lurch back and forth.

For instance, in 2020, during the final quarter of the first Trump administration, the White House Counsel on Environmental Quality (CEQ) took steps to change the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by limiting federal oversight on newly begun projects, shortening the permissible length and depth of applications, and reducing the obligation to study the long-term impact of projects on the environment.  …

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Recyclable plastic materials stacked at waste sorting plant and sky
Legislation / New York
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NY Packaging Legislation Gets Wrapped up in Red Tape Again

Last month, the New York State Assembly demurred from taking up a vote for the second time on the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (“PRRIA”). The PRRIA was designed to cause a restructuring of the life cycle of packaging within the state by fundamentally shifting the burden of handling packaging waste from municipalities and consumers to the corporations manufacturing them in the first place.

As a threshold matter, the PRRIA was intended to reduce plastic packaging by 30 percent within the next 12 years, …

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Empire State Building
Emerging Issues / New York
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New York Fighting the Federal Government to Clear the Air on Congestion Pricing

Ask any New Yorker what their top five complaints are about the city and either “traffic” or “gridlock” (or both) are all but certain to be represented.

Indeed, you don’t get to be called “the Business Capital of the World” without piling enough people on to the Island of Manhattan to get that business done, and the result has been that the ‘City that Never Sleeps’ has ‘Traffic that Never Moves.’

At least, until recently, when, on January 5, after six years in development, the …

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New Jersey Flag with blue sky background
New Jersey / PFAS
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Trial and Juror: 3M and Dupont Move to ‘Bench’ NJDEP PFAS Case

In 2019, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) brought suit against Dupont and 3M seeking clean-up, removal, and costs for what NJ officials claimed was more than 100 years of indiscriminate dumping of thousands of pollutants into the Chambers Works compound in Salem County, NJ.

According to the pleadings, among the contaminants released were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known for their motility and resistance to biodegradation, and linked to various kinds of cancer. The complaint alleges PFAS have been knowingly dispersed into …

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Smoke from chimney
EPA / Litigation
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Frustrated by EPA’s Delay on Air Quality, Environmental Groups Tell the Agency: “NOx it Off!”

Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) is a very reactive, brown-hued gas commonly produced when fuels are burned at high temperature by motor vehicles, chemical plants, etc. Industries will often intentionally oxidize NOx to produce lacquers, dies, and Nitric Acid, which is basic component in both fertilizers and explosives. When NOx is released into the atmosphere as an industrial byproduct, the results contribute substantially to smog, ozone depletion, and acid rain. More directly, exposure to NOx by humans can result in respiratory difficulty and eye, nose, and throat …

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emissions
Emissions / Settlements
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Everything Oiled is Sued Again

It has the origins of a great American Success Story – in 1886, in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, a vast reservoir of oil was found in Lima, Ohio, prompting legendary entrepreneur John D. Rockefeller to hire John Van Dyke to construct an oil refinery right on the spot. German-American chemist Herman Frasch worked with Van Dyke to perfect a method for taking the sulfur out of Lima’s oil to make it more marketable. The results were explosive (figuratively); The ‘Solar Refinery,’ as …

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Red and white molecules
Emerging Issues
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The Devil You Know… is not TFA (yet)

Through the modern industrial age, there’s always been a push-and-pull between the utility of our innovations and the risks they often inadvertently create. In the 70’s, we discovered the synthetic pesticide that was so effectively combating typhus and malaria, DDT, was causing breast cancer and impairing neurological development in babies. In the 80’s and 90’s, the CFCs that we used as aerosol propellants and refrigerant turned out to be damaging to the ozone layer.

Recently, it’s gotten more complicated: We still enjoy the increased power …

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Long exposure of Hudson Yards and Midtown Manhattan across the Hudson River on a hazy day where the Canadian fire smoke engulfs the city including the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building
Clean Air Act / EPA
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EPA Clearly Wants the Haze Gone

On a clear day, you can’t actually see forever — if you follow the blue sky out to the horizon, you will often see it become somewhat more pale and opaque, owing to ‘visible pollution,’ or “haze” — the result of the interaction of sunlight with particulate matter in the air.

Before the modern industrial age, haze was largely attributed to wind-blown dust, soot from wild-fires, and other types of volatile organic compounds (VOC) released by trees and plants into the atmosphere from America’s vast …

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EPA Offices, Washington DC
Clean Air Act / EPA
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Big Wheel Keep on Turnin’, EPA Keep on Churnin’ Out Regulations

Stationary combustion turbines, often referred to as gas turbines, are used to generate high volumes of electricity at power stations, dams, and industrial centers. Despite their size, noise, and prodigious output, these engines are simple, with a design that dates, at least in concept, all the way back to 150 BC when a Greek inventor named “Hero” designed a ‘toy’ sitting on top of heated water, the gases of which caused the toy to spin.

This concept, compressing air and then injecting fuel and heat …

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Flag of California
California / Emissions
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Appeals Court Rules Californi-missions Standards Can Stay High

It all started in the early 40’s, when the smog was so bad in California that visibility was measured in city blocks, and people suffered from nausea, stinging eyes, and difficulty breathing. By the 50’s, the California government had shut down some refineries and smoke-stack power plants, but the smog persisted. Finally, chemists discovered that some of California’s most famous and hallowed assets were combining with California’s disproportionate share of gas-powered cars to create the problem; the ubiquitous ‘golden’ sunshine was reacting with the compounds …

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