LATEST INSIGHTS

Clean Air Act / Climate Change
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Kivalina and AEP Strike Again – Oakland and San Francisco Climate Change Suits Dismissed

By Order dated June 25, 2018, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuits filed by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland seeking compensation from five of the world’s largest energy producers for the costs of adapting to climate change allegedly caused in part by these companies’ sale of fossil fuels. This dismissal brings to an end, at least temporarily, to two of the fourteen second-generation climate change lawsuits that have been filed by various cities and …

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General / New York
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New York State Requires Manufacturers of Household Cleaning Products to Disclose Chemical Ingredients. Heads Up! This Includes Nanomaterials.

On June 6, 2018, the State of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) launched a new initiative to require the public disclosure of chemical ingredients in household cleaning products.

The cited authority for this program derives from Environmental Conservation Law (ECL) Article 35 and New York Code of Rules and Regulations (NYCRR) Part 659. The statute and regulations authorize the commissioner of NYSDEC to require manufacturers of domestic and commercial cleaning products distributed, sold, or offered for sale (including over the internet) in the …

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EPA
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Old MacDonald Had a Gas Station — EPA Requires Increased Quantities of Ethanol in National GasolineSupply, but Producers are Skeptical

The Environmental Protection Agency has increased the total amount of ethanol and biodiesel that must be used in 2019 to 19.88 billion gallons under the Proposed Renewable Fuel Standard for 2019, a 3 percent increase over 2018 levels. Fifteen billion gallons of the blended gasoline will be traditional ethanol, made from crops like corn and soy, while the remainder will be composed of biofuels and biodiesel.

This change was bolstered by agricultural and renewable fuel lobbyists, who argue that American farmers suffer from low commodity …

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EPA / Massachusetts
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And Then There Were Five: One State Expands Its Concern To Other PFAS Chemicals And Other Major (Breaking) News On PFAS

Every week there’s more news surrounding the mystifying nature of PFAS chemicals. Our firm recently published a well-received article that explored the state of PFAS and what the horizon holds for regulation and litigation. And this week we have more news on the PFAS front. We should buckle-up because it’s only going to heat-up from here.

In November 2017, we reported on the New Jersey scientists that were urging the state to impose a strict limit of 13 ppt for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) as the …

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Legislation / New York
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Be Prepared: New York City Cooling Tower Enforcement Heats Up As Summer Approaches

It has been about three years since Legionnaires’ disease made national headlines associated with the cooling tower of the Opera House Hotel in the South Bronx.  Legionnaires’ disease is a serious type of pneumonia caused by a waterborne pathogen known as Legionella. It is contracted when susceptible individuals inhale water droplets or mist containing elevated levels of legionella bacteria. New York City has as many as 1,200 towers that are evaporative heat exchangers usually installed on the top of a building as part of …

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California / Emerging Issues
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The Roundup Windup

Widespread personal injury litigation based on exposure to Roundup, the widely-used pesticide produced by the Monsanto Company, is no longer a plaintiffs’ bar pipe-dream — it is close to becoming a reality. Hundreds of cases have been filed, mostly in St. Louis and San Francisco, and the first trial of such a matter will commence this week in California state court.

As we have reported previously, there has been broad and long-running controversy over whether glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, may be carcinogenic to …

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Emerging Issues
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In the Hands of the States: Pesticide Use and Regulation of Marijuana Cultivation

To date, nine states and Washington, DC, have legalized marijuana for recreational use for adults over the age of 21. Additionally, medical marijuana is legal in another 29 states. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has stated that “With over 60 percent of Americans now supporting the full legalization of marijuana for adults, the momentum behind marijuana law reform will not only continue but increase as we head into 2018.”

Despite remaining illegal on the federal level, in 2017, legal marijuana sales …

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CERCLA / New York
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NY’s Highest Court Makes it Clear – NYS DEC Has Authority to Unilaterally Remediate Hazardous Waste Sites

In October 2016, New York’s Appellate Division held that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) overstepped its boundaries when it unilaterally undertook the remediation of FMC’s site in Niagara County, New York. FMC Corp. v. New York State Dept. of Envtl. Conservation, 143 A.D.3d 1128 (3d Dept. 2016).

NY’s highest court – the Court of Appeals – smacked down the Appellate Division’s ruling and reversed it.

The facts:

For over 60 years, FMC has owned and operated a 103-acre property in …

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Wastewater
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Out of the Sludge Pond and into the Fire? Tractor Accident Leads to Spill of 10 million Gallons of Orange-Tinted Water

An industrial accident last month at the Hi-Crush mine in Whitehall, Wisconsin is shaping-up to have some potentially significant environmental effects. A contractor’s bulldozer slid into a deep settling basin at the mine in western Wisconsin, leading to an hours-long effort to rescue the man from a 15-foot-deep pond. Rescuers freed the driver after emptying an estimated 10 million gallons of water from the pond into a Trempealeau River tributary. The settling basin contained a large amount of sludge- water, mixed with sand and chemicals. …

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General
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Perrin Conferences: Environmental Risk and Litigation Conference

Join Goldberg Segalla’s John A. Lee on June 12, 2018 at Perrin Conferences Environmental Risk and Litigation Conference in New York City, which will cover topics such as “The Trump Administration’s Impacts on Environmental Litigation” and “PFAS: Evolution from Emerging Contaminant to Frequent Headliner.”

John will be part of a panel discussion titled “The Environmental Impact of Climate Change.” The panel will explore projected regional climate change impacts and its potential effects on the insurance industry, as well as the impact of traditional …

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