LATEST INSIGHTS

EPA Offices, Washington DC
EPA
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EPA Announces Plan to Eliminate its Office of Research and Development

The Environmental Protection Agency announced July 18 it would continue workforce reductions through the elimination of its Office of Research and Development, which provides the independent scientific research that underpins nearly all the agency’s policies and regulations.

For decades, the science office has analyzed a multitude of risks, including the impacts of hazardous chemicals, hydraulic fracking, contamination to public water supplies, and wildfire smoke. Industrial manufacturers have historically been critical of the research by the Office of Research and Development because it frequently was used …

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PFOA / Settlements
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DuPont Agrees to $27M Settlement in Hoosick Falls PFOA Contamination Lawsuit

Earlier this month, chemical maker DuPont agreed to a $27 million settlement to resolve the Hoosick Falls class action, which involved allegations of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination of the upstate New York village’s water supply.

In February 2016, class action, Baker, et al. v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., et al, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York regarding a Teflon fabric coating facility in Hoosick Falls. The class, which involves hundreds of plaintiffs, alleged that …

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Scientist working with chemicals for research in a lab
PFAS
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Study Claims PFAS Can be Destroyed and Converted into Fluorochemicals with Finite Phosphate Saved for Reuse

Do you want to destroy PFAS? But why stop there? Continue on to convert them into high value fluorochemicals, and recover and reuse the phosphate salts.

That’s what one new study claims it can do.

The authors reacted PFAS with potassium phosphate salts under solvent-free mechanochemical conditions — a mineralization process enabling fluorine recovery as KF (potassium fluoride) and K2PO3F (potassium fluorophosphate) for fluorination chemistry.

The phosphate salts can be recovered for reuse, implying no detrimental impact on the phosphorus cycle. Therefore, the authors say “PFASs …

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Emissions / EPA
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EPA Grants Coke Plants Breathing Room on Emissions Requirements

The EPA on July 2 issued a finalized interim rule, published six days later in the Federal Register, which delays implementation of certain National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) requirements for coke oven manufacturing facilities.

According to the EPA, hazardous air pollutants (HAP) emitted from these coke oven manufacturing facilities can include benzene, mercury, lead and arsenic. Coke at these facilities is produced using coal and coke-oven batteries (which is a group of connected coke ovens). From there, coke in blast furnaces then …

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Maine state flags and the American flag waving in the wind on a clear day
Legislation / Maine
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Support is Split as Maine’s Governor Gives State’s Foundational Packaging EPR Law a Modern Makeover

Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation, also known as EPR laws, is a policy-based approach that holds producers accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products, particularly for take-back, recycling, and final disposal. Although various other countries have implemented EPR legislation as early as the 1990s, its adoption in the U.S. has been considerably slow, fragmented, and entirely state driven.

In July 2021, Maine pathed the way for packaging EPR legislation in the U.S. when it passed the bill known as LD 1541, which established a …

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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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Nuclear Plant
New York / Nuclear Power Plants
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New York State Goes Nuclear

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced June 25 that she is directing New York Power Authority to add at least one gigawatt of new nuclear power generation by building a zero-emission nuclear power plant somewhere in upstate New York.

This announcement, four years after the 2021 closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant due to safety concerns pertaining to nuclear waste disposal, came as a surprise to many who expected the governor to, instead, recommend cap-and-invest regulations pursuant to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection …

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NEPA / Regulations
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Agencies Take Major Federal Action Significantly Affecting NEPA’s Future

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) applies to a major federal action that significantly affects the quality of the human environment. On June 30, several federal agencies took their own federal action which will likely have significant impacts in how NEPA is implemented in the future.

In particular, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of Agriculture (DOA), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Interior (DOI) and Department of Transportation (DOT) revoked their regulations which govern how these agencies handle their review of proposed projects under …

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Flatten paper carton boxes
Legislation / New York
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New York State Legislature Fails Again to Pass Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation

Influenced by laws in existence in multiple states, including California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington, the New York State Legislature has examined in recent years extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation intended to hold producers accountable for managing their packaging at the end of life. 

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA), aka A1749, was proposed to create an EPR program for packaging.

PRRIA would:

  • Reduce plastic packaging by 30 percent incrementally over 12 years.
  • Require that by 2052 all packaging
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Clean Air Act
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Venue Matters: Supreme Court Clarifies Where Clean Air Act Cases Belong

On June 18, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions that clarify a deceptively simple question under the Clean Air Act: Where should lawsuits challenging EPA actions be filed?

The rulings – EPA v. Calumet Shreveport Refining LLC and Oklahoma et al. v. EPA – do not change the substance of environmental law, but they do shape how and where that law gets litigated. And that matters.

At the heart of both cases is a venue provision in the Clean Air Act, which …

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